Lisbon Coffee & Pastry Guide: Pastel de Nata, Ginjinha & the Best Cafes

A morning in Lisbon begins with ritual: a small, intensely strong bica (espresso) and a warm pastel de nata (custard tart) at a marble-topped counter, standing, because the Portuguese have been doing exactly this since the 18th century and see no need to change. The combination of Lisbon's coffee culture and its extraordinary pastry tradition is one of the great simple pleasures of European food, and understanding it requires knowing where to go — because the gap between a mediocre tourist pastel and a perfect original from the source is enormous.

The non-negotiable pilgrimage is to Pastéis de Belém in the riverside Belém neighbourhood — the original home of the pastel de nata, where monks from the adjacent Jerónimos Monastery began selling the tarts in 1837 using a recipe still kept secret today. The queues are managed efficiently, the tarts arrive hot from the oven at your table, and the experience of eating one dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar while looking out at the Tagus is precisely as good as people say. The neighbourhood cafes around Lisbon's traditional markets — Mercado da Ribeira, Mercado de Campo de Ourique — offer excellent alternatives without the Belém queue.

Beyond the nata, Lisbon's pastry culture encompasses the bola de berlim (jam doughnut, sold on beaches), travesseiro (almond and egg cream puff from Sintra), and the extraordinary variety of doces conventuais (convent sweets) made with egg yolks and sugar that medieval Portuguese nuns developed to use the egg whites left over from starching religious habits. For a different ritual, the tiny corner bar A Ginjinha near Praça Dom Pedro IV has been serving the city's signature cherry liqueur in a single-shot glass (with or without a preserved cherry) for nearly 200 years — one of the most authentic Lisbon experiences available for under €2.