Snacking My Way Through Portugal

Portugal does not really do snacks as a separate category. It does petiscos, which are small plates you eat standing up, and it does the free bowl of salty things a bar puts down when you order a beer. The line between a snack and a meal is thinner here than almost anywhere in Europe.

Six days in Lisbon, walking, with notes.

The tremoço bowl

Order a beer at any neighbourhood bar and a bowl of lupin beans arrives without being asked for. They are brined, they are the size of a large coin, and you squeeze each one so the bean pops out of its skin. The skin goes in the discard bowl.

They taste of salt and very little else, which is exactly the job. They are there to make you order another beer. They work.

Tinned fish, properly

Skip the tourist shops on Rua Augusta where tins are sold as souvenirs at four times the price. Go to a grocer and buy what Portuguese people buy: Ramirez sardines in olive oil, or Minerva mackerel.

Eat them the way they are eaten here, on bread, with the oil from the tin poured over. The salt is in the fish, not added on top. A good tin needs nothing.

The best counter we found was inside the Mercado de Campo de Ourique, away from the main tourist market, where a man will open a tin, put it on a board with bread and pickles, and charge you about five euros.

Pastéis de bacalhau

Salt cod fritters. Cod that has been salted, dried, soaked back to life and then mixed with potato and fried. This is the national snack and there is a considerable gap between the good ones and the ones sold in a heated cabinet near a viewpoint.

A good one is loose inside and tastes of fish. A bad one is dense and tastes of potato and old oil. The tell is whether they are frying to order.

Chouriço, on fire

At a few older restaurants the chouriço arrives on a small ceramic dish with alcohol lit underneath it, and you turn it with tongs while it blisters. It is theatre, and it is also the best way to eat it, because the fat renders and the salt concentrates.

The sweet interruption

You cannot write about eating in Lisbon without the pastel de nata, and the reason it belongs in a salty guide is the salt in the pastry. A good one is not just sweet. The lamination carries enough salt to keep the custard from cloying, which is why you can eat two and why you should not attempt three.

Manteigaria, standing at the counter, cinnamon on top. The queue at Belém is not worth it.

What to bring home

• Tinned sardines, the plain ones in olive oil, not the flavoured tins aimed at visitors
• Flor de sal from the Algarve, which is finer and less mineral than French fleur de sel
• Piri-piri, the actual bottle from a supermarket, not the gift-shop version

What I got wrong

I spent the first two days looking for snack shops and found nothing, because there aren't any. The snacks are in the bars and the grocers. Once I stopped looking for a shop with a sign, the city opened up.