What an active day we had as we near the end of our winter adventure.
Lynn found the Casa Museo Medeiros e Alameida online, an unusual house museum, because the collections are more important than the house. Sr. Madeiros was a major industrialist in the first half of the 20th century in Lisbon. He made his first fortune importing Morris cars from England (you may recognize the brand as Morris Garage or MG) to Portugal, creating and dominating the auto industry in his country. He later went on to pioneer commercial aviation in Portugal. (If you watch the ending of Casablanca, the logo on the airplane taking off for Lisbon was his airline, even though the aircraft itself was not.)
In 1943, he and his wife purchased an 1896 Parisian-style mansion in central Lisbon. The prosperous years following WWII gave him both the funds and the time to collect a prodigious amount of art and artifacts. He even purchased and installed his own chapel.
By the early 1960s, the couple made plans to keep the entire collection intact by simply donating the house and all its contents to a foundation. As part of the project, they commissioned an architect to design and build a new house on the grounds of the adjacent garden, where they lived out the rest of their lives. Today, the entire compound has been utilized as the museum.
The Old Wing of the house is preserved as they lived in it, complete with all their possessions, some 2,000 individual pieces distributed through 27 galleries. The collection includes furniture, paintings, sculpture, textiles and sacred art, including their chapel.
One entire room is devoted to his clock and watch collection, including a Breguet pocket watch owned by the Duke of Wellington. In another room is a silver service that was used by Napoleon during his exile. Clearly, Sr. Medeiros had an eye for the best. And the funds to afford the best.
After a pleasant tour of both sections of the house, we summoned Uber to take us to the Ribeira Time Out Market across the street from the Casa de Sodre station where the trains leave for Cascais. (4.42 euros before tip–no kidding; Uber in Lisbon is cheaper than public transit.)
The market resembles Mercado Centrale in Florence and is obviously built on the same business model. On one side of the ground level is a traditional fresh market offering the full selection of fruit, vegetables, fish and meats of all kinds. But the fresh market was closed the first time we visited after Cascais, and it was closing up this time, even though it was not even 2 p.m.
The big draw is the prepared food market. The large space is ringed with restaurants that surround the main floor of community tables. Patrons line up at the counters and take their orders to the long tables. Bars offering wine and beer are right at hand to quench the thirst. Like Mercado Centrale in Florence, the Time Out Market is privately owned and operated, so all the napkins, for instance, bear the market name and all the food stalls have the same visual design. The prevailing atmosphere in the entire place is energetic and fun with a high-end culinary calling.
We found Cozinha de Felicidade, a food stall offering counter seating on two sides overlooking their kitchen, so we pulled up two seats and ordered a delicious lunch of duck croquettes (essentially duck confit rolled into a ball, breaded and lightly fried) with a shared dish of black pork chunks with asparagus, sweet potatoes and another croquette that may or may not have been bacalao but did not taste fishy at all. With two glasses of wine, it was a perfect lunch for us.
We did not want to eat too much, because we had an early dinner reservation at a tiny place right down the street from our apartment called Canto da Vila. It is impossible to find if you are not specifically looking for it, largely because it has no sign on the street and is tucked into a little corner lot. The only identification is a small logo a the top of the menu board standing outside the door.
But what food.
We started with the coperta, which here included the customary olive oil, olives and specially flavored chef’s butter to go with the bread, which was toasted, a first for us in Portugal. The coperta also included another first–roasted peppers in olive oil. The selection was good enough to make the entire meal, but we had also ordered padron peppers, which came out in a huge bowl. Those were the first padron peppers we had ever seen in Portugal. And they were good.
But we had to stop eating those too, when our main dishes came out. Lynn had ordered the chef’s special fish of the day, which our Nepalese waiter (yes, another one!) described as dorado/grouper/sea bream/bass. (It’s all the same fish, moist and flaky and tender.) Lynn’s fish was served en papillote, which keeps the fish extra moist and even more flavorful. It was served over a compote of vegetables and potatoes that mixed into a broth with the liquids coming from the filet of fish.
I ordered the saltimbocca, a rarely found dish consisting of chicken strips fused with ham strips into a single, salty portion subtly accented by cheese. I loved and ate every bite. To finish off the night, our Nepalese friend poured small glasses of some special sort of Port. It tasted more concentrated than regular Ports, and served as a most fitting cap on perhaps our best meal in Portugal.
Even with the coperta totaling nearly six euros, the total bill with a bottle of wine was 54.60 euros. Try finding that anywhere else but Portugal. And remember, Lisbon is more expensive than Porto.
We promised to return. But it was time to walk up the hill and down the 79 steps to the apartment to watch the Australian Open with portuguese commentary overdubbed before retiring for an early start the next day up the mountains to Sintra.