The Best Restaurants in Lisbon (Two in the City, One Worth Leaving Town For)
The Best Restaurants in Lisbon (Two in the City, One Worth Leaving Town For)
One chef is behind both the fifteen-course tasting menu you’d plan a trip around and the little bar where the same tricks arrive one bite at a time for a few euro each. His name is José Avillez, and once you know that, planning dinner in Lisbon gets much simpler — you’re choosing which version of him your evening has room for.
Below are the two restaurants in the city we’d send you to, in the order we’d book them, plus a third that isn’t in Lisbon at all and earns its place anyway. Every one is a meal we ate ourselves in Portugal, and every one gets its catch as well as its good part.
Belcanto, if you only get one reservation
Belcanto is Avillez’s two-Michelin-star restaurant, and the thing to order is the Discoveries Menu: fifteen courses that walk you through Portuguese history from 1415 to the 21st century, which he describes as moving forward by land and sea to the present day. On the plate that means an olive that isn’t really an olive, and edible rocks you have to pick out of a pile of real ones.
The dish that changed my mind was the sardine, served cold with bell pepper, tomato and a yeast emulsion alongside a cucumber granita. I’m normally not a fan of sardines. This one was salty, peppery and citrusy all at once, and with a glass of the local Lovina beer it felt like perfect gourmet pub food. Most of the time I wasn’t sure what I was eating, and it was all delicious anyway.
The menu is the same at lunch and dinner, so take whichever slot you can get — dinner was completely booked when we tried and we were thrilled to land a lunch table. Order the wine pairing: ten glasses from all over Portugal, including the Porto and Douro wine regions.
The catch is access and time. Getting in is hard, the menu leans heavily on seafood so call ahead about allergies, and fifteen courses is not something you rush. Clear the afternoon.
Mini Bar, where the same ideas cost 3 to 12 euro
Mini Bar is Avillez’s first gourmet bar, in Chiado, one of Lisbon’s most popular districts. You find it by the soft glow from inside and a small sign. Ask any concierge or local in Lisbon where to have a great dinner somewhere trendy and this is the name that comes back — we heard it so many times we finally gave in.
Inside it’s leather chairs, small nooks and a long bar, with a circus theme through the decor. There are three ways to order — the “On Now” tasting menu, the “Epic” tasting menu, or à la carte. Go Epic the first time and let the kitchen decide; order à la carte on a second visit once you know your favourites. Ours were the exploding olives again, the smoked mackerel, the tuna tartare and a Ferrero Rocher that is very much not a Ferrero Rocher. Start with a cocktail and finish with a bottle of wine.
Every plate is one bite, priced at roughly 3 to 12 euro, and that is the whole appeal: Avillez is a multiple-Michelin-star chef, and this is where you eat his cooking without paying typical Michelin-star prices.
“Mini Bar is the cool younger brother of Belcanto. Highly creative dishes like what you expect from Chef Avillez, yet with a quirky twist and much less expensive.
The catch is the room. It’s small — probably where the name comes from — and every inch of it was full the night we went, so treat a reservation as compulsory. It’s not a quiet dinner either: a group of thirty-somethings with pretty cocktails on one side of us, an older couple studying the menu on the other. We came back more than once anyway.
One more, and it isn’t in Lisbon: Vila Joya
The honest part first. Vila Joya is not a Lisbon restaurant. It’s on the Algarve, the beach coast in the south of Portugal, so eating here means leaving the city and making a trip of it — a drive, not a taxi ride. We’re putting it on a Lisbon list anyway, because it’s one of the best meals we’ve had anywhere.
It has two Michelin stars and a menu that gets rewritten every single day, so nobody eats the same meal twice. Chef Dieter Koschina builds it out of local ingredients and European technique: guinea fowl stuffed with black truffles and artichokes, or bacalhau — dried and salted cod — confited and paired with beetroot coulis and yogurt. Our table was on the edge of the terrace above the beach, lit by candles, and the team greet you by name.
Take the wine pairing here too. Portuguese wine is genuinely hard to order from, because it doesn’t get sorted by grape variety the way most lists are, and the sommelier walked us through it properly. If you want to watch the work up close, book the chef’s table, which is inside the kitchen.
“Dining at Vila Joya was like watching a ballet; a graceful series of complex movements unfolded in front of us. Each dish was presented with the intent to make us curious, charmed, and leave us wanting more.
The catch is the same as everywhere else on this list, only harder: there is very little seating and a long wait list, so book far ahead. Staying at the hotel puts you near the front of that queue, which is the real argument for a night there rather than driving down and back.
How we’d actually pick
One meal in Lisbon: Belcanto, booked the moment you know your dates. Two meals: Belcanto for the long lunch and Mini Bar for dinner, in that order — you’ll spot the same ideas turning up in miniature, and the second meal is better for having eaten the first. If the reservation never comes through, Mini Bar on its own isn’t a consolation prize.
And if you’re planning a Portugal trip rather than a Lisbon weekend, put Vila Joya on it and give it the drive it needs — it’s the one we’d rearrange plans around, and the one to book before anything else.
