Lisbon's New Fine Dining: 6 Restaurants That Are Better Than Ever

Forbes

17-04-2025

Fifty Seconds
There's never been a better time to eat snazzily in Lisbon. A new generation of Portuguese chefs is taking over storied establishments and putting their own internationally inflected stamps on them, others are embracing their deeply regional roots and writing culinary love letters to their hometowns, and a few savvy transplants are doing their own thing with more and more confidence.
While natural wine bars and brunch cafés are proliferating throughout the Portuguese capital, hipster-traditional 'neo tascas' are becoming critical darlings, and Michelin's slow drip of new stars has left some food lovers disappointed, there are still restaurants committed to fine dining in its full glory—or else in its newer, more playful and casual f0rmat—with tasting menus, trolley service and ever-more-inventive beverage pairings.
Atlantic wreckfish, spinach and bivalves at Cura
The city's Four Seasons hotel will always be the Ritz to Lisboetas, especially those with a fondness for history and architecture. The quietly glamorous dining room at the hotel's Michelin-star restaurant, Cura, would be worth a trip on its own—the book-matched marble behind the bar, the elegant Deco armchairs, the gorgeous wood inlays that decorate the walls. But in the past two months, new chef de cuisine Rodolfo Lavrador has also been elevating the food as a star of the city's gastronomic scene. Lavrador worked in fine dining kitchens in Madrid, New York and London before returning to his native Portugal and joining Cura as sous-chef three years ago. Since he's taken over the kitchen here, he's evolved the five- and ten-course tasting menus to have a Portuguese soul and a welcome lightness. Linguini-like ribbons of squid are paired with hazelnut, toasted seaweed butter, bergamot and Oscietra caviar. Teardrop-shaped spring peas are complemented by chorizo, egg yolk and cured tuna. Refreshingly, even the long menu takes less than three hours to complete, and leaves guests pleasantly satisfied rather than overwhelmed.
Scarlet prawn with Asian buns, curry and lemon caviar at Fifty Seconds
Chef Rui Silvestre already held the distinction of being the youngest Portuguese chef to earn a Michelin star in Portugal (when he was just 29) when he was tapped to fill some of the biggest kitchen clogs in town. He took over the kitchen at Fifty Seconds from Spanish maestro Martín Berasategui in early 2024 and has retained that restaurant's star as well. Silvestre's ambitious 14-course tasting menu is more fully Portuguese than that of his predecessors—but fully Portuguese in a way that includes the former colonies as well as the continent. One of his grandmothers grew up in Goa, and his mother was born in Mozambique. That upbringing shows in his confident use of spice—and not only the curries and masalas of the Portuguese-speaking world. Blue lobster is enlivened with harissa, amberjack pops with jalapeño, and Balfegó tuna gets a wake-up from wasabi. Head sommelier Marc Pinto has won all kinds of awards for his exquisite pairings—and plenty of ooohs and aaahs for the large-format bottles of private-label port he wheels out on a trolley at the end of the meal—and the dining room remains a stunner. It sits atop the Myriad by Sana hotel in the Vasco da Gama Tower, some 400 feet high (and a 50-second elevator ride) with some of the most dramatic views in town.
A new rhubarb dessert at Boubou's
Portuguese-French chef Louise Bourrat quickly established herself as Lisbon's fine dining wunderkind when she arrived in 2018 to help her brother and sister-in-law open their namesake restaurant. Although she won the French version of Top Chef in 2022 and was named Breakthrough Chef in Portugal in 2024, she's less interested in celebrity than in turning out ever more innovative and delightful food. Her brand-new 'Bloom' menu (seven or ten courses) is arguably her best yet. It's certainly the prettiest, with standout dishes like tuna belly and sea urchin bites topped with purple radish flowers; grilled, raw, and lacto-fermented white asparagus dolled up with fermented kumquat and elderflowers; and royal crab that's accompanied by geranium gel and a meticulously composed 'sunflower' of caviar surrounded by petals of celery root that have been marinated in apple juice. The pre-dessert of rhubarb sorbet with pickled and confit rhubarb, sour cotton candy and vivid blue butterfly pea tea is perfectly beautiful—as is the relaxed, plant-filled dining room.
Dinner service inside at Plano
Dinner on a summer evening in the backyard garden at Plano, where chef Vitor Adão cooks over an open fire, is one of the most magical culinary encounters in Lisbon. But even inside, the experience is memorable, thanks to the brick-lined dining room and Adão's technique-driven but genuinely passionate cooking. Earlier this year, to celebrate the restaurant's sixth anniversary, he doubled down on making it his own. Now he's fully embracing his roots in Trás-os-Montes ('behind the mountains'), a rural, remote area in the far north of the country. That's clear from the get-go, when a procession of hyper-regional snacks—a rissole (fried pastry) of wild boar from the village of Nogueira, grilled Mirandês lamb from Miranda do Douro with a crispy waffle and riata, Maronesa veal covilhete (small pie) with lime gel and turnip—emerges from the kitchen and is nestled into ceramics that serve as bas-relief maps of the region. After the geography lesson, the rest of the tasting menu is more traditional, but still a tribute to his community, featuring dishes like Adão's now-famous potato mille-fueille (using potatoes from the very farm where he grew up), here with black garlic, coriander mayonnaise and black truffle, and the sopa seca (very dry bread soup) that comes with the bacalhau (salted cod) course.
A dessert at Fortaleza do Guincho
Last year, the classic restaurant at the Relais & Châteaux hotel Fortaleza do Guincho in the Lisbon suburb of Cascais began a renovation that's lightening up the dining room while keeping the focus on the dramatic Atlantic right outside. Longtime chef Gil Fernandes also redesigned the concept of the menu (whose specifics change with the seasons, like everyone's these days) to incorporate more sustainability storytelling. 'In Guincho, we aim to contribute, even in a small way, to address global challenges,' he says. They're 'fostering a mindset that drives meaningful change—sourcing locally, supporting regenerative and organic farming, foraging responsibly, and honoring the natural seasonality of ingredients.' And while they're aiming for some dishes to be thought-provoking, they've wisely steered far clear of the 'edible' plastic trend that was leaving diners with sticky mouths a few years ago and instead ensured that everything—razor clams with curry and foraged oxalis flowers, 'Grandmother's Recipe' for limpet rice with sea fennel— is still a pleasure to eat.
A zero waste dish at Sem
'We're changing all the time,' says George McLoed, the New Zealand chef behind Lisbon's most fully committed zero-waste restaurant. He opened Sem ('without' in Portuguese) a few years ago with his Brazilian partner in business and life, Lara Espírito Santo. Their aim is to use absolutely everything that comes into their kitchen. It's nose to tail, scales to spines, roots to leaves, and even leftover bread that gets fermented into a yummy, vegemite-like spread. The six-course menu, which changes almost daily, emphasizes innovation and regenerative agriculture, eschewing foie gras and tuna belly (actually, all marine fish, as much of it is at risk of depletion) and instead using small amounts of animal protein from invasive freshwater fish or famously renewable rabbits. They forage, they pickle, they upcycle their furniture, and they educate guests about being part of the solution to the food industry's environmental problems. McLoed warns diners that they're going to encounter a lot of fermentation, and to be sure, some of the sensory experiences are pleasantly funky. Take, for instance, a recurring dish based on potatoes with Serra da Estrela cheese, hay-cured pears, grilled peas seasoned with wild sumac vinegar, a spicy strawberry seed sauce with chard, and egg white garum. These are flavors that exist nowhere else in Lisbon.