Great Lunch Quickly

-
Traditionally, Tasca is a Portuguese word for a place to have good, tasty food: fast and with a reasonable price.  If you travel through Portugal, in the small villages, as well as in the bigger cities, you can usually find a tasca. They are characterized by lack of modern decor, they have large, shared tables or lots of small ones close together. The menu is normally reduced to two or three daily options, and is served as a complete menu: soup, main plate, dessert, coffee - and of course the bread and the olives. Tascas usually have a cheap house wine served in a jug.  The best part of the tascas is that normally the food is delicious, honestly Portuguese and cheap.  Service is fast and without frills. Without the drinks, you will find the menu to be between 7 and 10 euros per person.

In Sintra we still have a few tascas: Tasca do Manel is the traditional kind, where you can sit together with the mayor and the carriage drivers: anyone wanting to eat well quickly. Tasca do Xico is a tasca with a twist - a more modern version with details and a larger menu.  With more menu options in addition to the daily deal, it is a proper, small restaurant with an old fashioned name that is also open in the evenings, with live music on the weekend evenings.  It is also one of the most popular places for dining of our guests. When I moved to Portugal 20+ years ago, Tasca do Xico had gotten it's name from the rooster that lived in the restaurant and the street, with the name of Xico.  Now there's a toy-rooster by the kitchen to carry on the name.

The rest of this blog entry was written by Olla-Riitta Aarikka, a frequent visitor from Finland.  



When travelling I usually enjoy eating local food. I don’t think there’s much point in going to Portugal, for example, to eat meatballs and potatoes - that I can get at home! Naturally it is already nice just not to have to cook yourself  but I really think you get a lot more out of your trip if you eat ‘locally’. The problem, however, is usually that I don’t want to spend the entire day just sitting in a restaurant, waiting for my meal. So I was really happy to find out that in Portugal you can eat local food quickly and without spending a fortune!
In Sintra there are many places to choose from! Yes, there is your Pizza Hut if that’s what you want but I highly recommend Portuguese restaurants! There are many different types of places to choose from and this year I decided to try a few small ‘café-lunch – restaurants’ TASCAS.
Manel behind the counter of  the Tasca do Manel
There seem to be many little places, but I was really happy to find a small place right next to the beautiful city hall: Tasca do Manel. They had a small selection of lunch dishes to choose from – I tried the duckrice which I think is a typical Portuguese dish and it was worth it. The people in the next table were having some kind of a sausage dish– that looked very tempting as well.  I got the food really fast, it was really good and totally affordable!  And I had a good time trying out my two words of Portuguese!

The staff at Tasca do Xico is very friendly
Another place that I tried was right in the middle of the historical centre  and it was called Tasca do Xico. This place is a little bigger than the first one, has a little larger menu and there were clearly more turists in this place (probably due to the location). The place was packed at lunch time and I took that as a sign that it was indeed a great place to eat.The staff was really friendly and they spoke English very well – and their menu was also in English! I chose to try their vegetable dish and it was sooooooo good! It looked good and tested even better! Actually I have eaten some of my best vegetarian dishes in Portugal!




It was certainly a right decision to eat locally! I got a lot more out of my stay and really enjoyed the food! The only thing I regret is that I didn’t ask for the recipe  for that vegetable dish! (well – isn’t that a wonderful excuse to go back?)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abandoned houses

-
Image
When you walk around Sintra and Lisbon you cannot but notice and wonder about some beautiful old buildings that look like they are abandoned and/or falling apart. It saddens many to see the potential of these houses going to waste just sitting there with broken or boarded up windows, roof half falling and the garden overgrown. Right across the street from us there is one such building and a few times a week I tell people the story of it. As the high fencing and basketball hoop lets you guess, it was 'Escola Academica' still about 20 years ago when we were building and moved here; a small private school. Once a beautiful building, full of life, the school mistress retired, the school lost its license, and for awhile after the death of the old school mistress, a family lived there with no rights to rental. When they were successfully evicted, we thought the house would be soon sold and were looking forward to new neighbors - with no luck until today. Many people wanted to
Read more

Chalet Biester - the film set for Johnny Depp's 'Ninth Gate'

-
Image
Just a bit above the village, in our view, there is a mansion called Chalet Biester.  Its black roof with turquoise trimming causes a lot of questions and awakes the curiosity of many Sintra visitors.  No, it cannot be visited; yes, it is a private house.  No, I don't know who lives there now; yes, it is where the Roman Polanski  thriller ' The Ninth Gate' was filmed, starring Johnny Depp.  There and a bit of everywhere in Sintra. The Chalet Biester as seen from our pool, circled in red Chalet Biester photographed from the Casa da Vista deck Ernesto Biester, a Portuguese journalist and playwright of German origin, famous in his time,  ordered this mansion to be built in around 1880 from the architect José Luis Monteiro.  Its interior was conceived by the famous Italian that worked on Quinta da Regaleira, also in Sintra, and the sceneries of La Scala Opera in Milano, and theater São Carlos in Lisbon: Luigi Manini - and the sculpture Leandro Braga.  Biest
Read more

Oh, the wonderful Pastries and Bread!

-
Image
As I have mentioned before, I frequently walk in the mornings with my dog; up and down the hills, into the forest and mountain roads. Recently there has been an extra burden on my walks. It is lent, the 40 days between Carnival and Easter. Tradition says you give up something for those 40 days that is like an addiction. Some people give up coffee, others chocolate or cigarettes. I decided to give up bread and pastries made with white wheat flour. And this is the reason that climbing up the 400 meters to town is now doubly difficult: the bakeries and pastry shops open their doors even before Pandora and I take off from home, so we walk up to town with the irresistible scent of freshly baked goodies lingering over the town center, calling my name - which I am patiently (more and less) ignoring. Sintra is famous for its pastries. The pastries of Piriquita, travesseiros , are famous all over Portugal, and people cue up to buy them to take home by boxes. These long, sugar coded
Read more