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Lisbon trip: useful topics about food and drinks

Here go some tips courtesy of Pintofcarlingplease to enjoy Lisbon... my favourite places to drink/eat over there:

Pavilhao Chines
89 Rua Dom Pedro

Very likely one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen. This is an ancient cocktails bar, of the likes of Chicote in Madrid, but as opposite it maintains intact its incredible atmosphere. Decorated with hundreds of different elements (small statues, quirky atrezzo, etc.), everything smells old here: the barmen, with their old fashioned suits and their educated manners, the pool table (one of those antiques with a net in each pot to grab the ball and ivory balls), the music, etc etc etc. The drinks menu is amazing, with plenty of cocktails and also good single malts. Prices are expensive to be Lisbon, but don’t expect to pay more than 6-7 € per cocktail, which is not too bad if you think about the quality of the stuff served. Also ham&cheese ‘tostas’ for those who feel for a quick snack. Only flaw, there are quite a lot of tourists there. But it is always like that, the same old tale of the tourist who complains about other tourists… quite lame.

Chapito
Rua do Castelo, 7

Incredible place, one of the best I’ve been in Lisbon. Situated in an incredible terrace quite close to the castle, the views are big time. This is a nice blend of a student place, a hippy place and a trendy place, incredible for having some drinks at late evening or early night on summer. While from the outside the place looks a bit dodgy, inside it is a really nice place, with art exhibitions, sometimes live music and even really nice barmaids. Don’t miss it in summer.

Café Taborda
Costa do Castelo, 75

In the basement of Teatro Taborda (Taborda Theatre), this is an incredible restaurant. Consistently cheap, the main room is located in a covered terrace with incredible views from Alfama. Food is mostly veggie, so if you are for steaks, roasts or stews, this is not your place, as they have some meat but it is not at all the best deal you can get here. A very nice place for having lunch and enjoy a long after lunch. Maybe the most romantic restaurant I’ve been in Lisbon.

Beer Terraces

All around Lisbon: in Santa Justa Elevator, in Alfama, in Chiado… everywhere. The best views of the city, for about 1.5€ per 30cl of Portuguese beer. I am a Sagres supporter, but if you feel more like a Superbock, it is equally good stuff for you buddy. Also great for having a snack, even in winter if you are lucky, while you are discovering this incredible city.

CCB- Belem Cultural Center
Praça do Império

A really horrible modern building, just climb the stairs and enjoy a quite hidden terrace on the first floor. With a small garden, the views of the river are really nice from here, and also the atmosphere and general mood is very good. Food and drinks are served inside, in a bar that resembles a Spanish university (cans of beer, trays, bad food, etc.). If you want to have a break while visiting Belem area, this is your place. Otherwise, if you are looking for a place to have food, avoid it as it is quite bad (and quite cheap, to be honest).

Pastais of Belem Café
Rua de Belém 8

A classic in Belem, where they sell their cream pies. It is in all the guides, and obviously packed with tourists all the time, but if it is not too stuffed it still deserves a visit.

Small restaurant in Alfama

Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the place, not even where it was located exactly. It was in Alfama, before arriving to the castle, close to Rua do Limoneiro. It is in a corner, and it has a small terrace with sunshades on it. It looks very dodgy, and inside there are a couple of tables on the left and a small dinning room on the right. There are only (or mainly) locals there. And the quality of cod (bacalao) is impressive, I deeply recommend the ‘Bacalao con natas’ (Cod with cream), really very very good. By the way, just an insider tip about small restaurants in Portugal/Lisbon. They offer you always some appetizers in the table, and you will pay for them just if you try them. As those appetizers are always included in the menu, it is a much better idea to wait until you have a look at it and you decide which of them you prefer to have, if any. They usually table you the most expensive ones, and if you don’t know how it works you may feel a bit conned when the bill comes. Advised you are!

Rio Coura
Rua de Augusto Rosa 30

Another small restaurant in Alfama, but as opposite to the previous one, quite famous and full of tourists, most of them Spanish (this place has a lot of good reviews on Ciao, that is very likely the reason). Food is cheap and good: sardines for two (5 medium sized ones each) + a green whine bottle 12€. Maybe not the best place in town, but a quite safe bet.

Cantinho da Paz
Rua da Paz 4

One of the best Indian restaurants I’ve ever eaten in. This places honors the cuisine of Goa, a former Portuguese and currently Indian colony, and it is a great option as an alternative to Portuguese food. Very good Tikka Masala (what I had there) but almost everything looked really tasty. Very full, with queue to go in, and plenty of Indian people inside, which is always a good sign. We paid 29€ for a two people dinner, including quite a lot of beer, which is a fairly good price if you think of the quality of the food.

A little coffe shop very close to the Castle entrance

Again, cannot remember the name or the exact location. It is not farther away than 5 minutes walking, and it is a lovely tiny coffe shop. I loved it.

Jazz Bar, Lisbon

A lovely place devoted to Jazz lovers in Barrio Alto. Really beautiful decoration, brilliant music, really cheap (2€ a Heineken bottle) and… empty! I suppose the reason for that is we were there too early, as it looks more like the sort of place people who likes late opening places go. Even if you are not a jazz fan, this place well deserves a drink or two.

Small trendy mojito bars in barrio alto.

Just all of them are lovely!!! And the quality of Mojitos… yummmmm!!!

Any other tip, just comment it!!!

The Mucky Pup

39 Queen's Head Street, N1 8NQ

It has been a while since the last post about a standalone pub, which by the way was the original purpose of the blog. This is due to several reasons, the main one I’m lastly quite lazy about posting and most of the new pubs I’m discovering are good enough for having a couple of pints on them but not good enough for sitting down in front of the computer and spend an hour or so writing about it. The Mucky Pup is obviously an exception to this.

The pub is located in Angel, about at 10 minutes walk from the tube station, and it is quite hidden in the middle of nowhere. It is a real classic on the area (it is more than 100 years old) and it has changed of owners and being refurbished quite a lot of times in the last years. The current owner (Angus) is really one of the most sympathetic and nice guys I’ve had the chance to meet in London, and that is saying quite a lot: he’s always up for a conversation about whatever, and he knows which is the friendly tone everybody should use to ask patrons to go inside the pub whenever they are boozing outside or to get everybody out when 1 o’clock comes and it’s time to close.

Apart of the friendly owner and barmen, the pub has some other pluses, as:

- Pool table, usually busy late but empty if you go for an early beer. If somebody else is playing you can always drop a quid on it in order to play the next game

- Darts board – the classic British one, with real darts and not that plastic crap we use elsewhere

- Juke Box for free. Indeed, this is one of the few places I’ve been with a free one, which indeed means you can listen the music you like and just the music you like if the pub is not too busy. If it is, be ready to wait for a couple of hours until your song is played, as song queues are frequently long. Music in the Juke Box, and hence music usually played in the Mucky Pup, comprehend bands as Syd Barrett, Jesus Lizard, Black Sabbath, Tom Waits, Girls Against Boys, Led Zeppeling, Nick Drake, Kyuss, Magnolia Electric Company, Cramps, Julie Driscoll, Black Mountain, Stones, Dead Kennedys, Creedence or Bowie.

What else… the food is q bit pricey, but the quality is really very good, much better than the average in a pub. This means this is maybe not the best place to have a quick burger, but a relaxed dinner (consisting in a burger, nevertheless :)). Drinks prices are OK (around £3-£3.20 per pint, and Guinness tastes especially well here, very likely because they clean the piping system quite frequently.


Decoration and furniture are quite common, and don’t deserve a specific reference. There are plenty of tables and chairs, but if you go on Saturday expect to find all of them busy. Also, it has a bicycles shed, it is, a small terrace where you can have a smoke. This is particularly nice as they have some heaters there, so if you are having some drinks with an addict you don’t freeze. Or you freeze less, depending of how hard is the winter at that poing.

If I had to find a flaw, I would say they only have Becks as lager, so no Carling/Fosters party over here. It is a silly flaw, as I know really very few people able to distinguish between those different brands, but it is really the only one I could find. Well, that and the fact that it is located in the very other corner of the city from my place.

Christmas weekend (and II): About a Brazilian restaurant, football and a long nite

I should have posted this before Christmas, when I wrote it, but even if it is just for completeness I reckon it worth doing it now.

Just remember the first part of the story (Friday night): I finished sort of wasted, with an injury just above my eyebrow and another in my chin.

So Saturday comes, and we had the Christmas lunch, my first one indeed in London. This is sort of a yearly tradition of my friends over here, and as they do it only once just before going back home it was well renown for being one of the craziest events. To be precise, the tradition was supposed to be a dinner, but Cesar and my self were crafty enough to move it to lunch. The reasons, three:

1. A lunch involves an after lunch, an evening party and a night party. A dinner just a night party.

2. Restaurants are packed on December for dinner, but not for lunch.

3. Barcelona vs Real Madrid

And so we went to Rodizio Rico, a chain restaurant with a branch very close to Angel tube station. The place is one of those Brazilian restaurants that work under an ‘eat as much meat as you can’ basis, for a fixed fee. I know a couple of friends in Spain who would enjoy it quite a lot, promise!

The waiters came in rounds with different treats, as lamb or pork meat, sausages, chorizo, and so on. There was also a salads and appetizers buffer for those who preferred it (I tried just the olives, which were surprisingly excellent). I have always thought that this concept, eat as much as you can, is overrated and frequently it is deceiving. It was the case, especially because at some point the waiters visits frequency slowed down really a lot, making more difficult to grab a piece of your favourite meat. It wasn’t too expensive, though, and the really impression was that having in mind we were too many people, it wasn’t really such a bad deal at all.

Of course, the chat on the lunch was all about my wounds, Teo’s wounds –remember I left him right after some stupid bastard punched him for no reason-, and how bad the Mojito’s at that place were. And football, of course, and how good friends we all were, even when the real thing was I had met some of them just the day before. I really felt like I had known them for a while, a long while.

By the way, the people on the lunch that day (most of them carried on for drinks later): JuanFran, César, César Jevi, Jason, Vladimir, Lorena, Auxi, Pablo, Teo, Justin, Diana, Belén, Jim, Ainara and Mariana (some more people came, but I cannot remember their names, sorry). Also Isa joined us later on.


With our meat belly prominently shaped, we went all of us to an O’Neills pub which was just besides the restaurant. This particular O’Neils was nice enough, compared with the sometimes poor standard they offer: good mood and quite quiet, especially after the Premier game finished. It was fairly big and most of the people didn’t smoke, which had as an obvious consequence the fact that I didn’t have to go to the freezing terrace all the time again and again. Also, music was loud but tolerable.

We had quite a lot of drinks over there (in my particular case mainly beer and scotch) and most of us even watched the Barca-Madrid there, enjoying the trademark drink or this pubs chain: Red Guinness. The game was crap for a Real supporter, you already know that. And even while I had a great time swearing to some stupid Catalanians –stupid because they were really stupid, not because they were Catalanians, don’t get me wrong - when Casillas stopped the penalty, this at the end backfired as they had the chance to laugh at last.

Anyway. After the game we went to a classic, The Mucky Pup. I owe a post to this pub since long time ago, so I promise it will be my next post. I’ll just say here that, as always, we had an incredible time until the closing time (1am) and we drunk too much (as always too?). Just that.

As the next-and-last step, and once we realized we weren’t going to be allowed in any place in the area, such bad was our state and also our look, we went to Jason’s place, in Old Street. I cannot really post anything in detail about what happened there, not without some of the people involved permission… I’ll brief it in simply four words: We Had Big Time. I may add that we had plenty of laughs, some singstar and even a very weird conversation with an sparking lamp (or an alien who just landed from Mars, depends who you ask about). Even some tv. And we didn’t have class A drugs, if that’s something that worries you. And, eventually, after saying goodbye to Teo and Pablo, who were meant to flight back to Spain the following day, I arrived at 9 o’clock in the morning to my place. Definitely too much of a weekend.

Crhismas Dream

Hiya!! Quite depressed after Christmas back in Spain, I have to say… of course, the reason for that is not (only) how nice all the people were over there, but also, and maybe this is a bit obvious, for the fact itself that it was holidays. I have a quite scientific theory about how a place may look like crap when you work on it, and incredibly nice when you are just on holidays (Barcelona is the biggest example I can think of about this).

Anyway. Let´s go with a quick briefing of the most knackering Chrismas holidays I can remember, emphasizing, obviously, the bars/pubs visited (yeah, this is pintofcarling, did you actually forget?)

Friday 19th: Arrive to Madrid at 10 pm and go straigth to party with former colleagues (and current friends) as Sebas, Albert, Pedro, Roquer, Sarriu, Ira, Silvia, Tere, Chema, etc etc etc. Places visited: Tatum (7) and a little dive (4) in Avenida Brasil (cannot and don’t want to remember it’s name, so bad it was. Good fun, though).

Saturday 20th: Beer with Pedro and lunch and drinks with Susana, Yago and Cristina in Ñeru (9), very close to Arenal Street in Madrid. Amazing Asturian food for a fair price, I recommend it very strongly, particuclarly if you have the chance to go there a week day and get the day menu. After that, drinks in Café Real (9), in Opera, a quite pricey place sort of the ones you might expect in Latina, but without that cool atmosphere I sometimes find so annoying. Also they serve one of the best carrot pies in Madrid (again, for a stupidly high price). Later on drinks in Pozuelo in Brujas (7), a Flemish bar in Avda Europa with a good mix of Belgian, German and British beers.

Sunday 21st: Early arrival (8am) to Lisbon. Lisbon day 1 (I’ll write a different post for the Lisbon trip).

Monday 22nd: Lisbon day 2.

Tuesday 23rd: Lisbon day 3.

Wednesday 24th: Lisbon day 4 and lunch with family. Drinks with my brother and Olsen in Getafe, in Taberna del Filibustero (9), a very nice place in Madrid with no special feature but a great atmosphere even at 8 pm the 24th of December (those guys don´t have a family, do they?). One of the best places to have some beers in Getafe at the moment, and a recent discovery. Late night, party with all Getafe friends first (Lali, Ana, Silvia, Vero, Ruben, Ivan, Angel, Maite, etc etc etc) at Chapeau (1), one of the worses clubs in Getafe if not actually the worst. Obvioulsy I left as soon as possible to join my brother and his friends (better known as Los Bolitas, somehow a myth in Getafe) in New Rot (6), where the party carried on til late. Incredible party mood til very very late, and cheap drinks. Can you ask more?

Thursday 25th. Wasted. Playstation 3 and a couple of drinks with my brother, Dani, Chaparro and Oscar.

Friday 26th: Here we go again. Coffe in Marta’s place, beers in Chus’ place, and beers&drinks in Don Jamon (8), one of the best places for ‘tapeo’ in Getafe. The tapas served there acted well enough as dinner, and, after that, we went again to la Taberna del Filibustero and late at night to Un Buen Dia (8), a nice club in Getafe where booze is absolutely horrible but music is quite enjoyable.

Saturday 27th: Friend’s official Crhistmas Lunch with Santi, Paco, Ruben, Adri, Chus, Angel and Ivan (obviously, one more year no girlfriend was allowed, for the sake of the party ;)). Beers in Casa del Jamon (3) and Ca;as y Tapas (4) in Gran Via, Madrid, and lunch in Friday’s (3), again in Gran Via. Very bad value for money, and particularly my steak was horrible. After that, drinks (quite a lot) in Cafeina (8), in Calle del Pez, and more drinks in Molly Malone (8), and more drinks in Tupperware (9) until 4 am. Tupperware is a classic alternative club in Malasa;a, and it’s main flaw is that it’s usually packed. Not that day. Even the spirits tasted properly, which is quite surprising over there… (a great example of the Spanish Garrafon). We forgot to have dinner that day.

Sunday 28th: Beers in Don Jamon and movie with Susana. We watched Changeling (8), the last one from Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie. It’s like one of those movies based in real facts you watch in Antena3 on a Saturday evening, but much better produced. Angelina is beautiful but, in this movie, too skinny.

Monday 29th: Brunch with Susana, and Bowling. She broke one arm in an ill-timed fall while bowling, and we had to go to a hospital. Unfortunately I had to cancel on of the main milestones of the week, the dinner planned with former Erasmus friends (former Erasmus, they are still friends all of them).

Tuesday 30th: after getting Susana to Burgos, Guitar Hero session with all the instruments (guitar, bass, drums and singer) in Chus’s place + Burger King + Fifa09 sesion in Santi’s place until late. One of my favourite days, I gotta say.

Wednesday 31st: Beers with my brother’s friends in El Boli (7), a nice tapeo bar in Getafe. After that, more beers and tapas with my friends in La Barrica (5) and Chilaba (10), an incredible bar where you can ask for almost anything as tapa with your beer (including burguers, hot dogs, montaditos, etc.). Later, mojitos and drinks with my brother friends again in Taberna del Filibustero, until 9. Dinner. Party in Angel’s house, where obviously PS3 and whisky where the main attractions until churros time.

Thursday 1st: Wasted (again). Quiet day in Getafe, with coffe and beers with Santi in the evening in La Cibelina (5), La Vinoteca (5) and eventually Don Jamon. After dinner, drinks with Marta, Gema, Angel and Chus in Canto Redondo (6), a fine bar in Getafe. Adrian joined us afterwards and so the Franciskaner party, until roughly 3 am.

Friday 2nd: Crazy night, starting in Mala Vida (9), one of the best pubs in Getafe where the best music blends perfectly with a nice Guinness or Murphys. Jack Daniel´s shots and Un Buen Dia later. Garage (9), my second house and the pub I´ve wasted more hours in my life, topped up the night with several calimotxo litres. Finally we went to Buen Dia again, until 5.30, when we were too tired to carry on.

Saturday 3rd: Visit to Susana in Burgos

Sunday 4th: Depression.