Last week was my elder sister's last weekend here in Portugal before she went back to University, so we made a family weekend out of it. We had amazing breakfast together, we went to the beach, visited friends, and we also watched old family home videos. For the last dinner on Sunday we wanted to go to a good restaurant and so we went to a place which is one of the best places I have ever been to. It is the Time Out Mercado da Ribeira in Lisbon. This big hall used to be a fish market (from the 13th century) and now it is like a big restaurant or stylish food court which has Lisbon's favourite food shops and restaurants.
When you walk in there is a big bright open space full of people (especially on the weekends). The outlook of the shops and restaurants have the same style, but they all have different food and drinks. You can walk around and look at all the open kitchens of the different stalls, and see, smell and experience all kinds of Portuguese specialities.
It is really hard to choose from all of the lovely looking food, but whatever you pick you can't go wrong.
Soup:
There is this fantastic soup place where every day there are 4 or 5 soups that you can choose from. We tasted a mushroom (with cheese and toasted onions), a mango (with almond) and a pepper soup(with toasted bread and bacon). All of them were amazing, but out of the three soups the mango was the best, because it was just the perfect combination of sweet and salty. Also I loved the titles of the soup containers. :)
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| Mushroom soup |
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| Mango soup |
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| Pepper soup |
Main cours:
For the main cours we decided to choose from various places. My older sister had pork (from the Alentejo region) with mashed potatoes, cabbage and bacon. I have never eaten pork that was so soft and heavenly and the bacon was just perfect with the cabbage. This dish was my favourite out of all. My mom decided to order a portuguese Bacalhau com natas which is an oven-baked dish made out of layers of fish (bacalhau), onions, potatoes and cream. My younger sister likes to keep it simple so she had a cheeseburger with fries. It is so simple but they managed to make something so mainstream so delicious. My dad ordered something more adventurous a Ceviche made from fish. :) It is made of raw fish with mango and some tortilla chips and salad on top. I tried the bruschetta wich was also very tasty. We shared all the food and tried everything we ordered and everyone agreed that the pork was the best of all.
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| Pork with mashed potatoes, cabbage and bacon. |
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| Bacalhau com natas |
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| Cheeseburger with fries |
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| Ceviche |
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Bruschetta
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Dessert:
We ate a lot of different food and so by the time we got to dessert we were full, but we couldn't miss out on the best ice cream. Santini has the best ice cream I have ever had. I always recommend it to people to try this place when they come to Portugal and nobody has ever regretted tasting it. I decided to have mango and raspberry and they were amazing, because they both tasted just like the actual fruit. My older sister had peanut and cantaloupe and my younger sister asked for a pancake with two scoops of ice cream on top (chocolate and chocolate chips).
We also tasted some macarons from another shop and we tried the peppermint, the chocolate and the coffe.
We had a blast, we laughed a lot and ate a lot and it was just great.I just loved everything about this place, the design, the food, the atmosphere the idea and the concept of it. I know that this wasn't the last time I went to Time Out Mercado da Ribeira.
A little father daughter arm wrestling
When you find out you are going to eat ice cream at Santini
I hope you've enjoyed this post and feel free to comment here on the blog, on facebook, on instagram, or on twitter. Have a lovely sunday! :)
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