Signature dishes of Portugal in Lisbon

Bacalhau: the national obsession

Salt cod arrived with the Newfoundland fishing fleets and never left. The version to order first is bacalhau à Brás, shredded cod folded through matchstick potatoes, onion and softly scrambled egg, finished with black olives and parsley. It should be loose and glossy, not dry. Expect €12-16 in a neighbourhood restaurant. Bacalhau com natas, baked with cream and potato, is the comfort-food option; bacalhau à lagareiro, a roasted loin drowned in olive oil with smashed potatoes, is the most expensive and the best showcase of the fish itself, usually €18-24.

Pastéis de bacalhau, the fried cod-and-potato croquettes, are the everyday form, sold three for about €4 at any tasca counter. For the full range, Laurentina on Avenida Conde Valbom bills itself as the king of cod and delivers on it; Solar dos Presuntos on Rua das Portas de Santo Antão does an outstanding lagareiro alongside its Minho specialities. In Chiado, Taberna da Rua das Flores serves lighter, modernised versions on a chalkboard menu. If a menu offers bacalhau at €8, it is frozen and pre-portioned; walk on.

Sardines, seafood and the cervejaria ritual

Grilled sardines, sardinhas assadas, are seasonal: fat and worth eating from June through September, and best on 12 and 13 June when Alfama and Graça grill them on the street for €3-4 with a hunk of bread. Outside those months, order them and you will get frozen fish. The rest of the year, go to the seafood instead. A cervejaria is a beer hall that specialises in shellfish, served at a marble counter with a €2 imperial in front of you and a paper bib if you order crab.

Cervejaria Ramiro at Avenida Almirante Reis 1 is the institution: garlic prawns, amêijoas à Bulhão Pato (clams with coriander, garlic and white wine), percebes when in season, then a prego steak sandwich as dessert. Queue by 6.30pm or take a ticket and wait an hour. Prices are by weight, so ask before ordering percebes, which can run €90 a kilo. Alternatives with shorter queues: Cervejaria O Pinóquio on Praça dos Restauradores, or Sea Me in Chiado for a more polished version of the same idea.

The pork sandwiches: bifana and prego

The bifana is thin pork loin simmered in garlic, white wine and paprika, jammed into a papo-seco roll and eaten standing at €2.50-4. It is the single best cheap thing in Lisbon. As Bifanas do Afonso on Rua da Madalena, near the cathedral, does the definitive version from a hatch, with mustard and piri-piri on the counter, and it is often gone by mid-afternoon. Casa das Bifanas on Praça da Figueira is the sit-down equivalent and does a solid version alongside pig-ear salad for the committed.

The prego is its beef cousin: a thin garlicky steak in the same roll, traditionally eaten after a seafood dinner rather than instead of one. O Trevo, on Praça Luís de Camões in Chiado, is a stand-up counter serving pregos for around €4 and has been doing it for decades. For the third member of the family, Nova Pombalina on Rua do Comércio makes a leitão sandwich of suckling pig with crackling for about €4.50, served from a queue of office workers between noon and 2pm.

Stews, soups and Sunday food

Caldo verde is the everyday soup: potato puree, shredded couve galega and a coin of chouriço, €2.50-4 a bowl and served everywhere. Açorda de marisco is a thick garlicky bread and seafood pottage that divides people; the Alentejan version with coriander, garlic and a poached egg is the one to try. Arroz de marisco arrives wet and soupy in an iron pot, meant to be shared and usually priced for two at €35-45, with the version at Uma restaurants and the coastal places at Cacilhas particularly good.

Cozido à portuguesa is the Sunday monster: boiled beef, pork, chouriço, morcela, cabbage, carrots, potatoes and rice on one platter, served on set days in traditional houses. Casa do Alentejo, in a startling Moorish-revival building at Rua das Portas de Santo Antão 58, does regional cooking in a courtyard worth seeing regardless of what you order. For the same tradition without the tourist address, Zé dos Cornos on Beco dos Surradores in Mouraria has been feeding builders and locals cheap, generous plates for years.

Octopus, ox and the tascas that do them

Polvo à lagareiro is octopus roasted until the edges char, served with the same smashed potatoes and a river of Alentejo olive oil. Ordered right, it is the best plate in Portuguese cuisine and costs €18-22. Salada de polvo, cold octopus with onion, vinegar and coriander, is the cheaper starter version. Bife à café, a thin steak under a mustard-cream sauce with a fried egg on top, is a Lisbon staple in old cafes and is exactly as heavy as it sounds.

For where to eat all of it, Taberna Sal Grosso on Calçada do Forte in Alfama is small, modern-traditional and needs booking. Ze da Mouraria on Rua João do Outeiro serves enormous portions of the classics at €12-15 to a room of regulars. Prado, on Travessa das Pedras Negras below the cathedral, is the ambitious end, sourcing from small Portuguese producers and rewriting the menu constantly. In Príncipe Real, the tascas along Rua da Escola Politécnica offer a quieter, more residential version of the same food.

Pastéis de nata and the sweet counter

The custard tart is the one thing everyone gets right in Lisbon. Pastéis de Belém on Rua de Belém has held the original monastery recipe since 1837, sells them warm at around €1.40, and the queue for takeaway moves faster than it looks; the interior tiled rooms usually have space. Manteigaria, with counters at Rua do Loreto in Chiado, the Time Out Market and Praça de Alegria, bakes continuously behind glass and rings a bell when a tray comes out. Dust with cinnamon, not sugar, and eat it standing.

Beyond the nata: queijadas from Sintra, travesseiros of almond and egg cream from Piriquita in Sintra, bolo de arroz and pastel de feijão in any pastelaria for around €1.20, and the convent sweets, all egg yolk and sugar, at Pastelaria Aloma in Campo de Ourique. Order a bica, the local espresso, at €0.80-1 at the counter, or a galão, milky coffee in a tall glass, at €1.60. Prices roughly double the moment you take a table on the terrace.

What to drink

Portuguese wine is the great value here. Vinho verde from the Minho is light, faintly spritzy and €2.50-3.50 a glass. Reds from the Douro and Alentejo run €3-5 by the glass and €18-30 by the bottle in restaurants. Ask for the vinho da casa, the house wine, which in a decent tasca comes in a jug at €6-9 a litre and is frequently better than the cheapest labelled bottle. Wine bars worth a stop: By the Wine on Rua das Flores, and the natural wine places clustered in Príncipe Real.

For spirits, ginjinha is the local sour-cherry liqueur, sold in shot glasses for about €1.50 from standing-room windows: A Ginjinha at Largo de São Domingos, near Rossio, has poured it since 1840, and the version com elas includes the boozy cherries. Beer means an imperial, a small draught Sagres or Super Bock at €1.50-2.50. Finish a meal with a bagaço or a glass of Moscatel de Setúbal, from the peninsula across the river, which is sweet, orange-scented and around €3.