one of the exciting places, a major food destination, we read about was mercado da ribeira.

so after putting our bags in our chiado apartment, we walked down to cais de sorde & a short distance to mercado.

this was lisbon’s main market since 1894. time out lisboa magazine took over management in 2014. the market stalls selling fresh produce are open 6am to 2pm.

the food court on the western side of the building, opened in may 2014, has canteen styled community tables, opens everyday 10am to midnight sun-wed & 10am to 2am thurs – sat.

what is exciting is that it features many many brand/chefs from portugal’s top restaurants & shops.

lisbonlux also provided a comprehensive listing of the boutique stalls at the market, selling food “from seafood to steak sandwiches, hamburgers, sushi and ice cream, among other specialties”.

we started with a €10 prosciutto & cheese plate from manteigaria silva. the white wine was costly at €6 but very good. the extra virgin olive oil was another €1.50 but it was very good indeed.

prosciutto was average, not specially “pang”, cheese was good.

the platter didn’t look like a lot but was pretty ok to share, and the bread was very good (portugese bread everywhere we go in lisbon & porto were very good) & fantastic with the olive oil.

next we had tuna tartare from tartar-ia.

not only it looked exquisite.

it was the best tune tartare i ever had. but it came expensive though, €18.75 for 150g.

you can call it explosion of flavours. don’t know what were the condiments but everything combined fabulously, fromt eh fragrant extra virgin olive oil to the truffle oil, wasabi mayo? etc…

just wonderful!

tuna tartare was so good we decided to try the steak tartare.

it was excellent too, though nothing so wow like the tuna tartare, and cheaper.

we also had a white & then a red from tartar-ia…white was not as good as the one from manteigaria silva. red was very good. 🙂

we rounded off with some cakes from Nós é Mais Bolos

not know what to order we asked for recommendations, and got the chocolate cake & egg cream cakes.

both were quite unsatisfactory!

gigi’s chocolate cake was too sweet, very so-so, somethin i would not take in singapore.

the egg sponge cake, they claimed best in the world. what can i say, non-descript, forgettable…

the next day i had an excellent egg cream cake at tartine. that was memorable.

portugal (both lisbon & porto) had excellent nata, the portugese egg tarts (& i didn’t know how good they were until i try a random one in singapore few days back, and that was literally unedible by comparison), and many other great pastry, so we don’t really need this.

we left mercado & took the tram 15e to belem. this photo from across the road as we walked to the tram station nearer cais de sorde.

c.h.e.f andy

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