Cork Oaks

Head deliberately south and mostly east out of Portugal's capital city of Lisbon and you'll eventually find yourself in the country's Alentejo Region. It's a different world. As you pass across the Tagus River over the massively long Vasco da Gama Bridge, the hills and the trams and the fado and the really, really excellent pastéis de nata fade away and are replaced with what I'd classify as decidedly more Mediterranean surroundings. Green and brown landscapes created equally by the sun's warmth. History reaching further back than Lisbon can possibly take you. Agriculture. Vineyards. Olive trees. Cattle. Amazing stuff. Things you don't find at home. At least not my home.

Stare out the window of your car or bus or whatever other type of transportation is taking you out of Portugal's capital city into a more relaxed world and you might notice a sight that will likely cause you to do a double take. There are groves in the Alentejo like no other that I have ever seen. Trees with naked rust red or scorched black trunks topped by gnarled branches that look like they are coated with knitted coverings. Seriously, it looks like someone has covered the limbs of the trees about six or seven feet off the ground with something to keep the trees warm in the night. And every so often, there are digits painted on the nude trunks. 

It's a bizarre sight. But not entirely unexpected.

Knitted coverings. I'm telling you...

One of the reasons I was so looking forward to spending time in the Alentejo Region was the opportunity to see cork trees (or cork oaks as I found out on this trip) in their natural state. It didn't take long for me to realize on our van ride from Lisbon to Évora that those strange groves of trees I was seeng in between the vineyards and cattle and olive trees had to be cork trees. I knew enough to know that cork is harvested by the bark being stripped from the tree, so putting two and two together had to mean that I had found from my van window seat what I wanted to see in the Alentejo. 

And soon after we got there, it was time to get up closer and personal-er.

Before I go further, I have to say that seeing cork trees up close was for me the most anticipated activity on our Portugal itinerary. I know it sounds kind of crazy, but it's totally true. It completely didn't measure up to what I envisioned it might be and yet it was awesome just the same. I'm fascinated by these trees. You could drop me off in a cork oak forest and just leave me there for hours. And maybe I say that now considering that is NOT what happened to me in Portugal. Not even close, as it turns out.

Portugal and cork have a special relationship. There are essentially seven cork producing countries in the world and Portugal's output beats all of the other six combined. This tiny little country on the Atlantic produces more than half of the entire world's cork!! How amazing is that? Now granted, the best climate for growing cork (based on the other six cork-producing countries - Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and France) is pretty much right in the area of the world where Portugal is located, but Spain is like four times the size of Portugal is a distant, distant second place. 

Cork is some serious stuff in Portugal. In 2020, exporting cork generated more than $1.8 billion (with a B) of revenue for the country. And in case you are wondering...yes, it's pretty much all centered around the wine industry. All the best cork is used for keeping wine in bottles (although I guess there are other alcoholic beverages that use cork stoppers also), with the lesser quality stuff and the leftovers used for thinks like building products, shoes and all manner of souvenirs sold in and around the town of Évora. Cork is definitely the thing in the Alentejo.

To get a better look at this stuff, we got up one morning, boarded a bus that had about six or seven times as many seats as there were people on the bus, and visited a farm. Yes, a farm.

What's happening down on the farm? A lot as it turned out.

There is such irony here. If you texted me or called me one morning and asked if I wanted to go to a farm in the United States somewhere near where I live, I would likely laugh and then respond with something like "why would I ever want to go to a farm?" But a farm on vacation? Yes, please!!!! It's crazy, I know. It was, I assure you, all about the cork oaks.

Now, I will say that I thought we were going specifically to see a cork farm. Turns out that wasn't true. But I'd do it again anyway.

After a 45 minute or so bus ride west of Évora to the town of Montemor-O-Novo, we found ourselves at Herdade do Freixo do Meio, a 600 hectare cooperative farm supported by the patronage of more than 150 local families. The farm has been operating for over 30 years and today grows vegetables and fruit; raises chickens, sheep, cows and the Alentejo's famous black pigs; and harvests olives and, of course, cork from their own orchards.

The cooperative is completely organic, but lately they have taken their farming beyond organic. Our guide, Bernardo, made the point that you can use all organic farming methods and still irreparably damage the land that's producing food to keep you alive. To avoid doing just that, they are rotating crops and grazing to allow the land time to recover. He took us to an egg-producing chicken coop with six separate sides and six separate yards attached to it. The chickens feed in each section in succession, allowing the other five to rest while the birds are elsewhere.

Bernardo told us that the farm is operating on renewable two year leases and has been for its lifetime. The lease payment is essentially nothing but there's a lot of sweat and hard work and money invested in this place. While the risk of their landlord pulling the plug seems remote, I can't imagine how devastating it would be if they did. No way I'd be comfortable with that level of risk.

So we are gathered in a plaza of sorts at the farm and get introduced to Bernardo and Racquel who are going to show us around the place before setting us up with a traditional farm lunch, and they ask us what we want to see. Sensing the real possibility that we might get enough votes in our group for chickens or pigs or olives or something to consume all our time on the property (and still not completely disabused of the notion that this is not just a cork farm visit), I offer that I'd like to see a cork tree. Cool. Got my request in and acknowledged. We set out to see a cork tree first. Specifically, the cork tree above; the one with a big zero painted on its trunk.

This is where we learned about the oaks thing. Cork trees are acorn bearing.

With the benefit of hindsight, Bernardo's question about what we wanted to see was strange, because from my perspective we saw the entire farm with some time to spare. Maybe it was a translation thing...

The cork oak we stood in front of that day was likely between 100 and 150 years old. The main trunk of the tree was pretty much naked, having been stripped of its very own home grown cork cover the prior year (2020). That explained the zero on the tree; cork trees are stripped every nine years and rather than keeping a log of when each tree was last harvested, the tree owners just have a number painted on the trunk corresponding to the last digit of the year that the tree was last harvested.

I imagined that we would be treated to some sort of demonstration here. I was way wrong. Cork harvesting or stripping is not a spectator sport. It's a highly skilled, highly paid job that can only be done in a few months of the year, namely the summer. And it was not the summer when we were there.

Cork souvenirs, anyone? There's plenty of selection in Évora, including whole piece of bark.

Generally speaking, as much cork as can be stripped from a tree in large pieces is removed during a season. It's a delicate balance: large pieces of cork are more valuable than smaller pieces and sometimes leaving smaller branches still covered can yield larger harvests later on. And then removing too much might also kill the tree. Considering it will take 40 or 50 years of growth to get the first harvest, killing a tree would be bad. 

You might be able to see in the second photograph above evidence of earlier harvests. The bark on the left of the photograph is clearly older than that in the middle. The prior harvest of our tree cut off way more than the 2020 harvest did.

Herdade do Freixo do Meio does not harvest their own cork. They subcontract it all to a band of axe-wielding cork strippers, which is completely appropriate because handheld axes with a sharpened chisel-like implement on the end of the axe handle is the tool used to strip cork off trees. Removal starts by chopping around and down the tree trunk and using the back of the axe head to tap on the bark to loosen it. From there, the end of the axe is used to wedge the pieces of bark off the tree, usually in a single sheet.

The cork is taken off site to be processed while the tree is labeled with a big white number so everyone know the year it was unceremoniously denuded. Our tree's trunk was a pale pink in color. I don't understand how the colors change as the cork grows back but we did see fields of trees labeled with a "3" that were so black they looked burnt.

Cork tree on a street corner in Évora.

Getting close to a cork tree isn't all about the learning and the visual, though. There had to be some touching. And there was. After all, this bark begged to be touched. 

I hate to say that it felt like cork because, well duh, that's exactly what it was but honestly, it felt like cork. It was a little squeaky like cork is. I know this stuff would likely end up a bottle of wine one day keeping that precious liquid inside and I know it's harvested for that exact purpose but it's still weird to touch a tree wrapped in cork. It's wild!!! Seriously. It doesn't seem real. All other trees have scratchy bark. Cork trees have spongy, squeaky cork. Strange stuff. Really odd.

The farm we visited elects to have all their trees stripped in a single year. I guess that makes it a lot easier to keep track of and to get folks on and off the farm. It must provide such a boon to the farm's fortunes every nine years (followed by eight way leaner years, I guess). It seemed like from our bus or van seats riding around Portugal that most orchards opted for a similar strategy. When we saw stripped cork trees they all seemed to be in the same state of nakedness or coverage.

The lobby of our hotel in Évora, with decorative cork bark and cork stools.

There are a couple of blurry to very blurry pictures in this post. They are that way because they were taken with an iPhone from the seat of a bus through a tinted window while traveling at anywhere from 30 to 60 or maybe more kilometers per hour. They are not intended to be artistic, although I wouldn't debate that there's a certain graphic quality I like to at least the cover photo of this post.

One of those blurry pictures (the one a couple of pictures up from this paragraph) shows the yard of a cork processing plant. I had no idea we'd be driving past one of these things but I'm glad we did and I'm glad I had the iPhone at the ready. This place was enormous. I was thinking it was like a giant Lowe's store with a parking lot like three times the size of a typical parking lot and there were stacks of cork everywhere but that doesn't even do it justice. It was even bigger than that. The amount of cork just sitting around outdoors waiting to be processed was staggering.

I know I already said that I was looking forward to our cork farm day more than any other on this trip. I also know that I said it was awesome (and it was!!!) despite the fact that we really got to see just one tree up close at the farm and a couple more on a street corner in Évora. It was not what I expected. I wanted to see cork removed by professional cork strippers in front of our very eyes. There was absolutely no way that was happening. Having said that, this was a still one of my best memories of Portugal. I will never remove a cork from a bottle of wine again without thinking of Portugal. It's the squeaking. I'm telling you.

Remember we were promised lunch by Bernardo and Racquel? Yeah, we ate that. It was a cozido, or Portuguese stew made up of boiled meats and vegetables. We ate a lot of great food in Portugal. Sure, some of the bacalao croquettes were better than others and I can say that about the pastéis and the sardines also. The cozido? I'm not trying to appear ungrateful but I'm not longing for that dish as I write this. 

The vegetables? Pretty good. The sausages? Also not complaining about those, despite the meat having, shall we say, a rougher grind than I prefer my sausages to have. Acorns? Yep, acorns. And they were good. Maybe they were cork acorns? Maybe not. But I'd eat them again, I guess. 

Portugal is a little famous as an offal eating nation. I don't think we had any of that in our cozido but there was definitely a piece of meat that was maybe a piece of ear? And a huge lump of fat like about an inch long. I ate the stew. It was hot and filling. But I left enough in the bowl so it wouldn't look like I deliberately was avoiding eating the fat, the potential ear and the one other questionable piece of meat or cartilage or whatever it was. 

Loved the cork trees. Those will stay with me forever. The cozido? Maybe I'll drop that one from the memory banks. The cork was enough. Well enough. I'm telling you...drop me off in a field of cork trees some afternoon and I'm a happy guy. Just pack me a lunch without fat and ear.

The large piece of fat is on the left in the front. Not touching that. And yes, I know I'm a baby.

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How We Did It

We didn't pick Herdade do Freixo do Meio as a destination. We decided to take our trip to Portugal with G Adventures, who we have loved from Ecuador, Kenya, Tanzania and Peru, and the farm was on their itinerary. Honestly, I have not figured out how to get there on our own but the farm does have a website and it's in both Portuguese and English. They also have rooms to rent if you wanted to stay on property. Click on the link on the first iteration of their name in the body of this post.

If you can't make it to a farm with cork trees or can't just stop on the side of the road and gaze at them from afar, there are two cork oaks in the city of Évora on the southwest corner of the traffic circle right outside the Porta do Raimundo in the city wall. If it makes no sense to be directed to a corner of a circle, I hope clicking the link in this paragraph makes more sense. They are in the southwest corner, I swear.

Finally, if you want to watch an awesome video of cork being stripped from some trees, watch this.

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The Earthquake

On the morning of November 1, 1755, about 180 miles southwest of Lisbon, the Earth moved. Like big time. An earthquake with an estimated 8.4 magnitude on the Richter Scale. That number may not mean anything to some folks (including me) but for the sake of comparison with other historical earthquakes, an 8.4 would put the 1755 earthquake as a top 20 quake of all time according to the United States Geological Survey. Yes, the Earth shook that morning in a pretty significant way. And it was felt in Lisbon in a transformational way, and that's not a good thing for 1755.

Before we get into how and why an earthquake 180 miles from Lisbon affected the city that November morning, I think it is worth making a couple of points regarding the prior paragraph. First...it's estimated, right? The Richter Scale wasn't created until 1935, so the 1755 quake wasn't actually recorded on any instrument. I'm trusting science on this one and assuming someone making this evaluation knows what they are doing when they assigned the 8.4 number. Second, the USGS has only been recording earthquakes since the early 20th century, so there may have been other, larger earthquakes that would have knocked an 8.4 out of the top 20. Having said all that, it was undoubtedly pretty significant in size.

It crushed Lisbon. In so many ways.

Detail from the side of the tomb of King Ferdinand I.

In 1755, the population of Lisbon was around 200,000 people. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 of those people perished as a result of the earthquake. That's up to 20% of the entire population of the city. That's a lot. In effectively one day. Think about if you were in a city hit by an earthquake and one out of every five people died as a result shortly thereafter.

The city made out worse than the people. 85% of the buildings in Lisbon were destroyed. If the initial quake didn't get them, the tsunami that followed about 40 minutes later might have. Or maybe it was the fires that spread unchecked throughout the city as a result of the initial tremors knocking over so many open flames in buildings all over the city.

I know what you are maybe thinking here. Why were there so many flames lit in the morning? Surely candles weren't needed for illumination at that time? Maybe not. But November 1 was All Saints' Day, and candles were lit all over the city in observance of that day. Which naturally led to all sorts of questions about why God was punishing the citizens of Lisbon on the very same day they were honoring all the saints. The notion of tectonic plates...maybe not so much accepted science in the middle of the eighteenth century. Divine retribution, yes. Seismology, no.

But destruction of lives, buildings and faith in the Catholic church wasn't all the earthquake wiped out. The Royal Library and other national archives were also lost, including historical records of the voyages of Vasco de Gama and other notable Portuguese explorers. The city of Lisbon didn't just lose people and buildings, it lost pretty much its entire historical record. It's actually amazing that natural disasters haven't wiped out libraries more often, I guess. But then again...8.4.

I said crushed, right? Not sure how it could have been much worse, short of total destruction of the city.

The reaction to the destruction caused by the earthquake was swift in Lisbon and southern Portugal. Reconstruction proceeded quickly on important public buildings that were left partially standing. What remained of entire sections of the city were razed, replanned and rebuilt. And for the first time in history, the destruction caused by the Earth moving was scientifically recorded. Not just what was destroyed, but how. But that's not what this post is about.

There are plenty of buildings in Lisbon that pre-date the 1755 earthquake. We visited the Castelo de São Jorge (from the 10th century) on the highest spot in the city; toured the Jerónimos Monastery (started in 1501); and learned about tiles in Portugal (it's a thing...) in the old Convento da Madre de Deus (from 1509). Looking at all three of those buildings today, you would never have known they were once shaken by an 8.4 magnitude earthquake. As you might expect. I mean what's the point of rebuilding quickly if things aren't back to normal pretty soon after you start.

We spend a lot of time tracking down history on our travels. The unique thing about chasing an earthquake from 250 plus years ago is that you are not likely to find much evidence of the thing actually having happened. Sure, you can see the aftereffects of an almost 2,000 year old volcanic eruption by visiting Herculaneum in Italy, but that's because the ensuing pyroclastic flow buried the entire town. But in a living, modern city, maybe not so much.

Except in Lisbon at the Convento do Carmo. Thanks in part to some procrastination and a quirk of Portuguese history.

The Convento do Carmo, Lisbon.

Like most damaged but not destroyed buildings in Lisbon in November 1755, reconstruction of the Convento do Carmo started right after the damage was assessed. The earthquake and subsequent fire shook down all the church's vaulting, leaving only the structural stone ribs in place, in addition to gutting the contents of the building. The building construction dated from the late 1300s and early 1400s (it was built quickly by gothic standards) on the site of an earlier convent building. By 1800, the roof was reconstructed above the apse and the chapels at the east end of the church.

After 1800, the restoration efforts stalled. The church was turned over to the military for use as a garrison in addition to being co-opted as a court of law and a sawmill, of all things. If there was any hope of the building ever being completely rebuilt, all that was extinguished in 1834 when the crown expelled the monastic orders from Portugal in what was effectively a gratuitous power and money grab. The relationship between the royal family and the Catholic church was a complicated one in Portugal. At most times, they colluded to keep the population repressed but every so often spats and disagreements led to things like the expulsion of the monastic orders. And in the case of the Convento, re-construction just stopped. Forever.

So in 2021, the Convento do Carmo sits in downtown Lisbon much the way it looked right after the 1755 earthquake as a beautiful ruin. It was one of the best places we visited in our few days in Lisbon on this trip.

Convento do Carmo: still ruined and reconstructed. 

For me, there's an obvious pull to the Convento do Carmo. There is nowhere else in Lisbon where you can get a sense first hand of how destructive the events of November 1, 1755 actually were. You can read all the stories and look at paintings and drawings of before and after conditions of the city on either side of the earthquake but there's only one spot in the city where you can lay eyes on what happened and that's at the Convento. 

It's absolutely amazing how something can still be standing this intact after 250 years the way this place is. It's a testament to the daring of the master stone masons who built gothic cathedrals all over Europe that with most of the building destroyed, the structure can remain erect. Admittedly, sometimes these men were too daring, but not in central Lisbon. And OK, there was a little stabilizing work done in the 1900s. I'd be cool with any of the buildings I've designed in my career still standing after this long. I'm not holding my breath.

It is worth every penny to be able to walk down the nave of the Convento church and look up and around. Gothic cathedrals have been some of my favorite buildings since I started studying architecture. I moved on past a lot of buildings from before the 1850s or so a long time ago, but not gothic cathedrals. It is so amazing to see the raw structure still standing after so much time. We never learned about this place in school. It is in many ways as impressive as any other gothic building I have ever set foot in. Especially on a gorgeous sunny day like the day we were there. The sky filled in the empty roof structure. 

There's another reason to visit the Convento. In 1864, the ruin was chosen to exhibit the collection of the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists, who had rescued and gathered objects at risk from destruction (mostly from the French and internal civil strife in the first half of the nineteenth century) throughout Portugal. The objects are still there. And there are a lot of them. 

In addition to visiting the ruin of the old Convento, you are also visiting the Carmo Archaeological Museum. It's a bit of an eclectic experience. There are objects from literally every period of Portuguese history, including some objects gathered (read: stolen) from the Americas dating to before the "discovery" of the New World by Christopher Columbus. 

The interior parts of the Museum actually have somewhat coherent collections. There are like types of exhibits (like the Pre-Columbian artifacts from what is now South America) gathered together in display cases telling a story. There are also some Moorish stone carvings which we appreciated; we searched high and low for some kind of Moorish experience in Portugal only to realize that most of it was just erased by the Christians who conquered them. It was actually harder to find evidence of the Moors in Portugal than it was finding evidence of the 1755 earthquake. Although ironically, we found the best of both in the exact same spot.

Moorish carvings and a fountain of unknown origin from the 17th or 18th century.

The outside portion of the Museum is a lot more random and (and I can't believe I'm saying this) a lot more fun. Objects are placed on the perimeter walls of the old ruined church with little regard for their age, function or relation to their neighbors. Fountains, coats of arms, tombstones, alms boxes, holy water fonts, crosses, sculptures, columns with or without capitals, capitals without columns, tombs, you name it. From everywhere. And anywhere. There's one (or more) of just about everything you could find made out of stone inside or around a church. Or other religious building for that matter.

It's an odd way of walking through a museum. So often, we are used to being led though exhibits that are connected together, usually with a narrative that connects stories or artifacts together. At the Convento, you just look at what interests you and then consult the descriptions of what is what. If you piece together the history then great. If not, then the experience is no less effective. Besides, I'm not sure it's really possible to connect the objects on display in the exterior portion of the Museum in any coherent way. 

I've been to other ruined castles and churches and other sorts of structures before. I am sure they are all over Europe and the world, laid to waste by armies or by bombing or just by time and nature overtaking what man put in place so long ago. I've also been to I don't know how museums built within the last 150 years or so displaying fragments of old buildings in them as exhibits. But I don't think I've been to a place quite like the Convento do Carmo before. The gravity of its own destruction both captured a specific time in history and leant weight to the objects it displayed, a destroyed building holding pieces from buildings destroyed way more completely than it was.

We visited the Convento do Carmo on a Sunday and found it closed. It's at the top of a pretty good hill (isn't everything in Lisbon?) and with a trip to Castelo São Jorge (which is at the top of an even bigger hill) scheduled the next day after a morning trip to Sintra, I almost gave up on a return trip to the Convento. I'm glad I didn't. Plus we still made it to the Castelo by hopping on the No. 28 tram. What better way to get there?

One last look at the Convento to the west into the setting sun.

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How We Did It

The Convento do Carmo / Carmo Archaeological Museum is located in central Lisbon on the historic Largo do Carmo square. Plug it into your favorite map app and walk along the dotted line (or whatever your app uses to show "the way") and presumably up some sort of hill until you get there. It's open from 10 am to 6 pm every day of the week except for Sundays, but also not on January 1, May 1 and December 25. Most museums in Lisbon are closed on Mondays, so if you are in the city on a Monday, the Convento is a great place to go.

If you approach the Convento from the east, like we did, and are using Google Maps, like I always do, the directions may be a little inscrutable. They take you past the Santa Justa Elevator and then actually show you walking right through a city block. There's no street or alley where Google Maps was taking us so we just walked around. That's not where Google Maps was taking us.

If you elect to use Google Maps and it shows you walking through something like it showed us, there's a small store across the street and just a bit to the right of the Santa Justa Elevator has has an elevator in the back of it. Take this elevator up to the roof, then walk up through what looked to be an outdoor (but totally empty) bar and get to the Convento much quicker and easier than walking around. Consider that my pro tip for this post.

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Pastéis

Sometimes we have to travel to find out what the fuss is all about. Maybe it's an historic site or a national park. It could be wildlife. Or a building. Or an experience. Sometimes it might be food. Or the people. Wherever you go in the world, there's always something that's the fuss. We went to Portugal for many reasons. But we figured while we were there, we may as well see what the fuss was all about with these pastel de nata things. 

Yes, we planned on a lot of dessert eating in Portugal.

I've written about food a whole lot on this blog. Over the past eight and a half years, food has been a part of some of my best travel memories. My love of food has shown up in comprehensive (from my perspective, at least) posts about everything I wanted to eat in a specific city or country or region. It's also shone in very focused studies of a specific type of food like gelato or a single street hot dog. For Portugal, the only food I'm going to write about is the pastel de nata.

That's not to say that we didn't have other great meals and snacks while we were in country. I highly recommend the ubiquitous salt cod croquettes and sardines; the tuna and sardine paste on any sort of bread; the black pork cheeks; and (very specifically, here) the nut tarts on the breakfast buffet of the Vitória Stone Hotel in Évora. But the pastel de nata is the thing.

We didn't want to go halfway on this one so we did a lot of in field research on this one. Like 12-1/2 (plus one additional bite) full size and one mini in-field research. It may have been overkill, but when else are we going to be in Portugal. I can't chance another 49 years between visits.

Pastéis de nata at Confeitaria do Balhão, Porto.

So, it's a custard tart, right? The ingredients that make up the pastel de nata are pretty simple: it's a puff pastry shell with a filling made from egg yolks, cream, sugar, flour and lemon zest. They are typically about three inches in diameter and about a half inch (or maybe a little bit more) high. The ideal pastel de nata has a crispy, crunchy crust and a filling that is smooth, not quite fully set and not overly sweet. They are sometimes (but not always, as we found out) served with cinnamon and powdered sugar to enhance the flavor and sweetness. And they are best warm, right out of the oven.

The origin of the pastry can be traced back to the monasteries and convents of Portugal. The story goes that egg whites used to be used to starch the nuns' habits, leaving the monks plenty of egg yolks to use up, which naturally led them to start using the yolks to make sweet treats for themselves and later to sell to raise money. I mean what else were they supposed to do with the yolks?

The source and timing of the origin of these pastries varies depending on which website on the internet that you read (I know, I know...always dangerous to read stuff on the internet and treat it as fact) but most seem to credit the Jerónimos Monastery in the Belém District of Lisbon with inventing these things sometime in the 18th century. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in Portugal in 1835, pastelerias (or whatever pastry shops were called in Portugal back then) started making the pastéis to replace what the monasteries could no longer crank out.

By the way, a singular pastry is called a pastel (pronounced pash-tel); more than one are pastéis (pronounced pash-taish). Quite frankly, one is not really enough. They typically are sold stacked with custard side together like a clamshell in sleeves of two or six. Go for the six. 

Jerónimos Monastery, Belém, Lisbon. Where it all (allegedly) started.

Finding a pastel de nata in Portugal is not a difficult task. They are almost literally everywhere, even on hotel breakfast buffets and in both airports we flew through. We certainly found it easier in Lisbon and Porto but pastelarias and confeiterias are plentiful in this country (the pastel de nata is not the only pastry available in Portugal by a long shot). You shouldn't have any issue finding them.

If there's one iconic place to get a pastel de nata, it's at Pastéis de Belém, which is on the block next to the Jerónimos Monastery. While there's some debate maybe about where and exactly when the original pastel de nata was invented, there seems to be little debate about where the first shop selling these things was established. It's here. In 1837. As evidence of how little debate there is about this fact, they don't even call the pastries pastel de nata. Here, they are pastel de Belém.

Based on everything we had read about Pastéis de Belém, we expected a long line here. We found none, perhaps because we got there before nine in the morning, and walked right in and ordered a few to go. They came in the characteristic six-sided cardboard sleeve with to-go packets of cinnamon and powdered sugar tucked into the flap that closes the sleeve. Time to find a park bench (also not a difficult task in Portugal) and eat.

In my opinion, if you are looking for a custard tart in Lisbon, you can't go wrong with Pastéis de Belém. The puff pastry was super crispy; the custard tasted about as custard-y as you could possibly want with the slightest hint of lemon; and it was warm with a smooth texture to the filling. Of all the pastéis we had while in Portugal, the crust of the pastéis we had here stands out as the most memorable. It probably attracts more tourists than any other place selling these things, but it delivers.

Our Pastéis de Belém experience in three pics. We tried these with and without cinnamon and sugar.

To be perfectly frank, Pastéis de Belém checked all of the boxes (crispy crust, warm, slightly runny filling, sweet but not too sweet with a hint of lemon) for an ideal pastel, probably because they are focused on making and selling these things as THE core of their business, rather than making a dozen or way more different types of pastries. Although they do actually make other things.

There were honestly very few places that did check all the boxes. All too often we found ourselves eating cold pastries or non-crispy shells or scrambled-eggy looking fillings when biting into a pastel from whatever spot we happened to be in. Very few had all three of these things, although the taste was mostly right pretty much everywhere we went (it's not all about the taste). Most other pastéis came with at least one deficiency. Some came close and some (like the mini ones from our Évora hotel breakfast buffet; yes, the same one with the amazing nut tarts) fell way short.

As amazing as the Pastéis de Belém are, they were not our favorite in Portugal. That honor goes to Manteigaria.

The interior of Manteigaria at Rua do Loreto 2 in Lisbon.

Maybe it was the novelty of our first bite that pushed Manteigaria to the top of our list. They were the first we tasted after all, in downtown Lisbon's stall at the Time Out Market Lisbon. They were warm with the correct, creamy texture and a crispy shell. Boxes checked, checked and checked. I took notes as I sampled each of the 13+ pastéis I bit into during our week plus in Portugal. I believe those from Manteigaria were one of the only two (along with Pastéis de Belém) that were made perfectly. I also remember them as less sweet, less eggy and with slightly more lemon than those in Belém. And those differences, to me, made all the difference.

To be perfectly fair to Pastéis de Belém (and after all we needed to do a lot of research here...) we went back to Manteigaria for a second tasting to make sure they were better, and we agreed our first impression that they were the best was correct. But honestly. there's not much in it. And these two places separated themselves easily from the competition in every other spot we visited. It is definitely worth seeking both of these places out in Lisbon (and Porto, in the case of Manteigaria). I could eat a couple (or three) of these things for breakfast right now as I'm finalizing this post. From Manteigaria, of course, if I had my druthers. 

Since I started writing this blog, we've had some amazing food in many corners of the globe, but I'm not sure we've ever had a cheaper and more fun quest for perfection in a food item anywhere in the world. These things are at worst just good and at best pure bliss to eat, with most of those that we ate tending to be toward the bliss end of the spectrum. They are incredibly cheap (if you pay more than €1,20 or so for a pastél anywhere other than an airport, you are overpaying significantly) and they can stand repeated and often eating, especially with all the hills in Lisbon and Porto. I'm confident I can work these things off super quickly. Or at least that's what I kept telling myself.

End of food blogging about Portugal for me. I don't know what else really needs to be said about the state of food in Portugal that can't be explained by a quest for the perfect pastel de nata.

"Pastel de nata, cream cake from Portugal". Breakfast buffet man-splaining in Évora.

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How We Did It

It is not difficult to find a pastel de nata in Portugal. There are pastry shops everywhere. Just walk into one, find something that looks like the pictures on this post and ask for one or more (and really consider more than one, please) by speaking rudimentary Portuguese, holding up fingers or just using English (it will likely work just fine). I hope what you find is as good as what we found. If not, keep eating them. There are quality pastéis out there. There's a good article from a couple of years ago on Eater.com (I don't know where we would be with food when traveling if it were not for Eater) that pointed us in the right direction, although we did not LOVE every place on this list.

If you are in Lisbon or Porto, I'd highly recommend a trip to Manteigaria. They have (I believe) five locations in Lisbon and one in Porto. We visited the locations on Rua do Loreto and in the Time Out Market in Lisbon and walked past the one in Porto on the way to sample an inferior pastel at another establishment. All the Manteigaria shops open at 8 a.m. and stay open until at least 8 p.m. with some locations open until midnight. The Rua do Loreto location is located at the northwest corner of the Praça Luis de Camões which has plentiful benches for pastéis eating.

If you make it to the Time Out Market in Lisbon, there are a lot more excellent eating choices to make than just Manteigaria. We had the best bacalao croquettes of the trip at Sea Me and a pretty good prego sandwich from Café de São Bento. I'm sure there is a lot more good food at the other stalls. Grab a table, browse and eat what strikes your fancy. 

Belém is a 30 minute or so bus or tram ride from downtown Lisbon. Both the Jerónimos Monastery and Pastéis de Belém are worth a visit. Pastéis de Belém is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The Monastery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday (like a lot of sights in Lisbon it is closed on Mondays). Our visit to the Monastery took about 45 minutes and I think we really took our time. There is some pretty impressive stone and tile work in the place, but that's another story for another time.

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Portugal

September 21, 2021 marked 20 months since I'd left the United States. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. I've had some great trips all over this country in those 20 months. But that was never the plan. 

When we cancelled 2020 trips out of the United States to Costa Rica and England and Rwanda and Uganda and Zanzibar, I figured we'd just move them to this year and just do 2020 in 2021. But that didn't work. No available vaccines in March forced us to move Costa Rica off a penciled in date in late winter or spring to the fall. To...well, pretty much now. But we decided to move that too. Too much COVID. Too much uncertainty. Probably overreacting. But I longed to use my passport again.

We thought about a lot of places besides Costa Rica to go this fall. We talked about Belize and Guatemala. I looked at Antigua and Barbuda, which by the way looks and sounds awesome and is definitely now on the future trips list. I glanced at Namibia when it slipped out of the CDC Level 4 list (it's sickening I'm looking at stuff like that but it's important). No England. No Rwanda or anything else in Africa. 

Then we looked at Portugal. And went. Why not? My passport was gathering too much dust and Portugal has the highest fully vaccinated rate in the world at more than 84% of their population so it seemed about as safe as we were likely to get to go to.

Dad, sister and me. 1972. My dad looks way cooler than I ever will.

This was my third trip there. Portugal is actually the first place I ever remember visiting outside of England where I was born. I'm sure I was four years old. There were two trips abroad earlier than that. My parents took me along with them to Spain when I was just one year into this world and then to Portugal a year later. I don't remember either of those. But I do remember that trip at four years of age.

Not that I really recall much. I told my mother recently I remember eating sardines and something like a road to a beach lined with orange trees. She said that was probably right, which made me feel good about my first travel memories. Other than that, there's not much there, other than the second and third pictures on this blog post which I had scanned into digital files from the slides my mom found in their house. I'm glad I have them. There are maybe a couple of more not on this post too. Somewhere on my hard drive.

It's been 49 years since I was in Portugal. It is likely the single longest absence I will ever have from a country, although let's face it in 13 years or 14 years I could go to Saint Lucia and break that record. I remember a lot more about this trip than I did my second trip all those years ago. I likely moved around a lot more than my parents did in 1972 and I'm glad I went back, even if it was to places I'd really never been to before. Every new place, even if it's sort of an old place sometimes, is an opportunity to learn more about the history and the people of our planet. 

Porto is amazing, by the way. I wish we had way more time there.

I welcomed this trip for far more reasons than a new stamp in the passport. It felt so good to use that thing though. It's been way too long. Here's hoping it won't ever be that long again. Maybe we can finally do most of what we planned to do in 2020 in 2022. Hopefully.

Portugal blog posts to follow.

Mom, sister and me. 1972.