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Lisbon's New Saldanha Café Grows All Its Own Produce On-Site
After a first location in Príncipe Real, two founders have opened a larger café in Saldanha built around an on-site garden.
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It is unusual to find a café in the centre of a city that harvests its own crops, yet a new venue in Lisbon's Saldanha district is doing exactly that. According to The Portugal News, the café and restaurant grows produce on site, in an area more often associated with offices and busy avenues than with gardens.
The founders, Dmitriy Burovik and Alina Moleshtianu, built their reputation with an earlier café in the trendy Príncipe Real neighbourhood. That first location established the concept that they have now brought to Saldanha.
The original café was a smaller space. The new venue is considerably larger, featuring a spacious terrace and a substantial garden that gives the site room to grow ingredients rather than only serve them.
That outdoor area functions as a living pantry for the kitchen. Herbs and other crops grown in the garden can be used directly in the café's dishes, shortening the distance between where ingredients are grown and where they are served.
Saldanha is one of Lisbon's main commercial districts, built around wide avenues and connected by two metro lines. Introducing a productive garden into that setting is a deliberate contrast with the surrounding concrete and traffic.
For local workers and residents, the café adds another option to a district known for its business addresses, while its garden gives the space a distinctive identity within Lisbon's crowded food scene.
Growing produce on site is also a response to a wider interest in shorter supply chains and visible provenance, which has shaped many new food ventures in European cities. By making the garden part of the customer experience rather than hiding it, the Saldanha café turns an operational choice into part of its character.
The expansion from Príncipe Real to Saldanha shows how a small independent concept can grow within Lisbon while keeping its identity. The larger site gives the founders room to develop the idea further than their first location allowed.
Sources: The Portugal News.