A meal with a view!

-
'Do you have a restaurant that you can recommend' ? is one of the questions we most answer here at Casa do Valle.  Yes, we can recommend many, and there are many we don't recommend. We base our information on two things: on our guest-to-guest book and our consequent visits.
We have a book where our guests write to the future guests what they have most enjoyed, least enjoyed, what they would recommend doing and where they would recommend eating  - and also NOT eating.  We also ask that our guests bring cards of the restaurants they enjoyed and place them in the guests' common space, the internet house.

Recently a few new places started appearing in these comments.  This entry is of two of them, with a nice view of and over the town.  We visited both of them (easily by foot from Casa do Valle), and found them worth writing about.


Wine Bar Bistrô da Praça

The Port Wine Shop in the main street of town opened a wine bar on the 1st floor - with a fantastic view to the National Palace and the main square of the Historical Center, with a wide range of plates of cheese, sausages, hams, patés and other tapas-style meals.
They serve great wine by the glass which is wonderful so you can have one type of wine with your cheese, another with the presunto and a third with the patê.  I went with a Portuguese lady friend who knows good cheese and sausages, and also she was very happy with the choice of tapas that we ordered. The breads are especially noteworthy - I who prefer not having wheat was thrilled to have the most wonderful corn-bread in the bread basket alongside the wonderful local bread my friend devoured.
The Bistro is just in front of the National Palace
in the center of town

Good food, excellent wine, fantastic view, and the decoration is fresh and attractive. Mainly for lunch or an early dinner, as they are not always open for dinners.  Their Facebook page keeps you updated on what is going on.











Dona Maria
The view of the National Palace from the terrace of Dona Maria
At the top part of the Historic Center, in the premises of the old Hotel Vitor, is the restaurant Dona Maria.
Beautiful restaurant with painted walls, originally by the famous arquitect Luigi Manini.  The views from the terrace are fabulous over the town, all the way to the sea.  This is a restaurant of fine food with typical Portuguese ingredients. Great for a bit fancier occasion, both lunch and dinner.  They also serve high tea!
Patrcia and Vilma over dinner
                                                                                          

I went for dinner with my two collegues and we all had different foods, fish and meat, and we were very happy with our food.  To take a look at their menu and get further information, check out their Facebook page.




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