Frutalmeidas

This place doesn't seem to have the sophistication touch that some places have with their comfy sofas and weird objects. Contrarily to the more modern spaces, Frutalmeidas, with more than 30 years, lives from the elders tradition, our parents came here for a little break, to sit down and eat something and maybe do some grocery shopping before heading home.

My father still remembers coming here, it is interesting when people open their eyes and say excited "Ooooh! That place!!". You feel you just brought up an old memory. I like it when people still conserve the taste of youth on their tongues and kind of return to it momentarily by remembering a flavour.

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They had an enormous variety of juices and as the weather was heating up I had two of them (watermelon and plum) for 1.50€ each and a pastry for 1.20€. This is the Santini of juices I must say. My friend got an almond pie (1.75€). There wasn't much to chose from in terms of chewables. Maybe 17h was already too late.

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Open from mondays to saturdays from 8h to 20h.
Also located on Rua Pedro Nunes, 25, 1050 Lisboa.

Bake the Difference (closed)

Note: There was a website and a facebook before, but Bake the Difference disappeared without a trace, lets take a moment of silence for vegan food

Super hidden behind the biggest avenue in Lisbon, it is only found by the ones that look for it. This is the only totally vegan bakery in Lisbon, it has no traces of animal products, and they make sure of it.

According to the girl, this is hard work because most of the soy derivative products do contain some animal traces (eggs, milk, honey), so they have to do a deep search and order it from specialized places, or else they will risk compromising their personal beliefs and ideologies.

It was really nice talking to this girl. She is a vegan since very little, so it is like a different world where sausage as a meat product doesn't exist. So she can easily say something like: "I'm going to have pasta with sausages". Non vegans take this info in a different way, because in our context the sausage is a meat product.

She shared more interesting knowledge: everything in big doses is bad for you, including soy. Soy milk everyday is to avoid and soy derivatives should be taken 3 or 4 times a week. Other meat substitutes can include beans or lentils. Food for thought.

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We asked for a small smoked tofu pie with veggies and the famous carrot cake. We shared the pie and when we were getting ready to start the carrot cake... Here comes the girl running like crazy "DON'T EAT THAT CAKE!", she stole the plate and ran away with it.

After this surrealist situation in which we were thinking that there was poison in there, she explained that the cook forgot to add sugar, so it was tasting a lot different, and as it was the house special, they didn't want to compromise.

They offered us something in exchange and we chose the lemon muffin with poppy seed. Nothing special, oh well. At least I have a weird story to tell.

Pastéis de Belém (Belém's Custard Tarts)

How silly is it that I didn't mention this place until now, and that I had never explore it like this before? I barely come here but it is the most touristic café there is, this place is actually cool and it has no end inside, I was surprised I can tell you.

I am not a fanatic for the Belém custard tart (pastéis de Belém) and the price is getting higher in a sneaky way (1.05€ for each, I remember being 80cents). I drank my usual coffee with milk (galão) and took annoying pictures while my friend was chewing this pre-historic recipe.

Meanwhile in a deep research I found somewhere that the secret was potato starch and a little pig fat on the dough. Hmmm...

This place is so crowded sometimes it gives me the idea of "the mass society":
- entering the place written in the tourist guide;
- stay on the queue and wait;
- look at random people until it reaches your turn;
- ask for the order in a newly acquired portuguese language basics;
- Wait for the package patiently;
- Scream at your children;
- Pay and say "owbereegahdow" (obrigado - thank you);
- Think her/his pronunciation is awesome;
- Sitting his/her fat ass in one of 600 tables;
- Feel medieval, fat and slightly portuguese due to eating a "pastel de Belém".
Note: this applies to portuguese people, except the thank you part, that sometimes doesn't exist.

I was looking everywhere to search for details and I noticed a hole in the ceiling with some clothes hanging. I don't know if it is part of decoration or some sacred beast that is living there and keeps the famous recipe under a guarding eye.

There are ancient relics, plates and vases, mosaics similar to my countryside house, old school registering machines, paintings, a weird fish and some foreign accents. We passed by all this and we left the sacred temple.

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Open everyday from 8h to 23h.

Poison d'Amour

Here lies the picture which portrays the cheapest choices in this trés trés chic teahouse. It was all I could manage to do before being spotted and forbidden of taking pictures by the owners. What are they afraid of? Aren't these breads beautiful? And they were all super tasty. I don't get it.

Little side note: don't try to combine a buttery with a chocolaty, the difference feels a bit aggressive to taste. The brioche was exquisite and the pain au chocolat was also good, but I would rather have chosen another thing.

In the picture I was able to spot several prices, so here they are anticlockwise starting with the loney pain au chocolat (1.90€), pães de deus (no price in sight), tarte groseilles and another which I can't spot the flavor (3.80€), brioche parisienne and brioche sucre (1.60€), croissants (1.60€), flan tart (2€ and something) and finally the pain aux raisins (2.20€).

Butter or jam costs and extra 0.60€, ham and cheese also have an extra cost but I did not ask for them this time.

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Everytime there was no waiter around I took the chance to take a sneaky picture. We also asked for a croissant later (we were quite hungry). After we finished we took some time to explore the rest of the place. There is another vitrine with sweets but these are no lower than 3€ each and they look like the ones served in fancy dinners that have five layers and look like an art piece that we are ashamed to destroy.

Glass doors let the light in from the backyard. I go outside and take more pictures as a revenge, but this is a very lame way of being hardcore. The garden is surrounded by a clumsy green, enough to bring the stress volume down but in desperate need of a gardener.

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Open from tuesday to friday from 8h to 20h and weekends from 9h to 20h.

Careca

I started in this place as a kid. I always associate it with mothers taking a coffee and croissant with their girl friends while the kids play hopscotch and other games in the patium... The croissants are what the house is famous for. They are small and glazed with sugar that then hardens making them very crunchy. When I was little I used to eat something called Hungarian Biscuits, they are round and yellow, and half of them is dipped in chocolate. Some get strawberry jam inside, but I never enjoyed fruit mixed with chocolate.

Eating outside is good with sunny weather but when the shadow comes and the cold takes over you have to make a big decision: either you endure it and eat peacefully or you have to prepare your ears for kids screaming inside. Which one would you choose?

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Each croissant costs 1.20€. They are not stuffy, you can easily eat one more if you have a sweet tooth. And just so you know, "Careca" means bald. I don't know the point, but maybe the owner took a step in accepting he was getting older.

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Open everyday except tuesday from 8h to 20h.

A Padaria Portuguesa

"The Portuguese Bakery" is opening everywhere. It is kind of the Starbucks of portuguese bakeries, kind of a presumptuous thing to be called itself like that, but it is amazingly good! A galão (coffee with milk) costs about 0.95€ and it is delicious. They also have a huge assortment of cheap cakes you can take home for around 4€, and with my coffee came accompanied by an enormous slice of pound cake with lemon and sugar glaze.

The bread choice is quite big and they all look delicious and fresh. For 5€ you get a sandwich + natural juice + soup menu. A friend of mine asked for a lemon tartlette (2€) and I approved again and again. There is no limit to the mouth watering products, no wonder they are growing in a blink of an eye.

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They are open from mondays to sundays, from 7:30h to 20h, at least in Baixa/Chiado, but you can check the website for more information.

A Merendeira

Merenda is a name of a salty pastry but it is also the name spanish give to the snack meal taken between lunch and dinner. This is usually the place where youngsters crash in the late hours of the night, after much drinking and no eating, to have a proper fill up. It is, for me, the best bread with choriço in the world, and it costs 2€.

Why are these the best ones? Well:
- They have a lot of chorizo;
- They are just out of the wood oven;
- They have flourish dough;
- The dough is not very baked so it is super soft;
- The wrinkly texture of bread;
- They are giant;
- They are soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside;
- They feed you well;
- They are cheap for the quality they have;
- They are REALLY good.

The place has large doors and it is spacey. They also have Caldo Verde (green cabbage soup), Arroz Doce (sweet rice), Pastéis de Bacalhau (codfish fried croquette?) and some more stuff. But the bread... Take the bread!

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Open from monday to friday, from 11h to 7h in the morning.