Have you heard about the illegal restaurants?
If the guest had asked me about legal restaurants I would have been surprised.
The Chinese ones….?
The guest continued and showed me his tablet with a story from Munchies last year: secret and illegal… the heading said. It was about Lisbon’s real Chinese restaurants.
We know them very well – and if there is something these restaurants are not then its being secret. And I doubt they are more illegal than most other restaurants in Lisbon.
We have travelled a lot in China – we have even been lost there – in places where guidebooks are useless, English doesn’t exist and the only way to find a place to sleep and eat is using your intuition.
So years ago when we searched for food in Lisbon’s Chinatown for the first time we did what we always do when we’re travelling in China: looked up!
We recognized them right away. The eateries where the Chinese community eats. Not secret at all – just very basic and modest and very authentic with the colorful Chinese Lamps outside the windows.
Back then there then there were no menus – all items were written on the walls in Chinese. Just like in China.
Today all of them have menus with colorful photos.
If you have traveled in China – especially in the countryside – you probably get as frustrated as we do when we – desperate to get the Chinese Treat – find ourselves in the so-called Chinese Restaurants that are highlighted in Guide Books and online communities like Zomato and The Fork. Except for the Soya Sauce most of these restaurant have nothing to do with Chinese food.
Unlike the Indians, the Nepalese, the Malaysian and the other non-European communities the Chinese insist of having their own micro universe wherever the settle.
Lisbon’s China Town where you find the secret places are not fine dining – BUT they are authentic, cheap and only 10 minutes from us down the hill – around Martim Moniz. Excellent when you have a Chinese craving.
Here are the ones we frequent, including our pick when we go Chinese with our friends.
In Lisbon Chinatown is only 5 minutes from us down the hill from our Miradouro
Here you find our local Chinatown (between Martim Moniz, Almirente Reis and Intendente) where you get everything you need if you want to cook yourself. All kinds of sauces, herbs, spices, pastas etc., super fresh vegetables and fruit that are brought in every day all kinds of dried mushrooms and noodles and all the kitchen utensils you need.
But most important – you can buy Chinese delicacies such as fermented cabbage, pigs feet, Duck, Pigs ear, strange smelling intestines and a lot of other goodies – all to take a way with a bag of rise and/or Baos... for take away
The menus are more or less the same in all the restaurants – BUT one of them make their own noodles when you order your soup.
If you don’t have time – a few of the Chinese groceries sell take away dishes made in the their kitchen behind the shop.
We eat “illegal” Chinese at least once every month.
The food is cheap, tasty and unpretentious. And like in China the dishes are served within a few minutes after you order.
