Eat This, You’ll Feel Better: Taking Time Out For Restoration At Lisbon’s Time Out Ribeira Market

 

The driving rain poured outside and I was wet sitting inside.  I had jet lag and was feeling sick, shaken, and not good in the stomach.  The two couples on either side of me were eating ungodly amounts of food, entire wheels of cheese, meat plates, steaks, quantities that made my system tremble.  If you can’t fight them, join them.

The morning had started, as mornings do in Portugal, with some type of roll and a coffee at a café near my flophouse there in Lisbon.  The rain wouldn’t let me wander far.  Travel days like this need an indoor activity and thus I jumped on the subway for two quick stops to the river.  The market is quite nearby and I had an umbrella, but I still became soaked.

 

The Mercado da Ribeira is a hipster market in Lisbon, Portugal that is produced by Time Out magazine.  I never knew Time Out did such things.  That’s mixing your journalistic integrity perhaps, but so far, I approve.  The mercado is so hipster that all the travel show people like Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain film there, and I will as well in my future Flophouse TV show.  The market is an old, existing one (since 1892, though some say centuries older) that Time Out says they took over in 2010, though another source says 2014.  The older produce market, half the space, has been there for a while, but the hipster part, the food court, opened in 2014.  It’s open until midnight most nights and 2:00 a.m. on the weekends, a start contrast with what an American market could do.

The produce and fish side is just a regular, non-bustling market, worth a stroll and a few photos, but not much more.  It’s the food court that becomes packed, and wait no don’t stop reading because of the phrase “food court”.  Check the place out:

 

 

This is not even a little like a North American mall food court.  The food rocks hard and people are joyous here.  Perhaps I should employ the phrase “gastronomy cluster hall” instead.  This food hall is something one sees and then cries internally, wondering why such a creation is apparently impossible in one’s home city.  It’s a massive public space lined with booths, each one of course selling different food, of a quality that few malls see.  The food stands were beautiful, some of them achingly so, with clearly a high class of equipment and a seriousness to the food.  Being a civilized country, there are serve-yourself beer taps in the center of the hall, and plenty of wine and mixed drinks available at other spots.

 

 

The charcuterie stall was the most photogenic, and I approached them time and time again.  Beautiful meat slices and cheese batons were laid out under the glass.  Folded meat slices covered a tray of black bread squares, topped with long-cut scallions.  Buns stuffed with meat sat in a pile, and strange cones full of meat, like little ice cream treats, made me wonder how to eat them.  Behind them, a fresh mozzarella seller had samples, small squares of bread with mozzarella, walnuts, and raisins, and another tray where bread squares held the cheese with cherry tomato halves, pesto, and basil leaves.  One could buy salads with the cheese, or my favorite-looking dish, a mozzarella ball topped with basil leaves perched on a bed of fresh-looking pasta, making the dish a composed salad.  Lovely.

 

 

For most, you order at the booths and take your pager to one of the center tables to wait.  Feeling fragile, I settled at an outer ring eating place that had its own counter.  The English couple next to me orders a meat and cheese charcuterie plate.  The cheese is an entire wheel, not a large one, but more than I could do.  That’s quite a bit of protein.  The woman then orders seafood rice and the man gets a steak with an egg on top.  How can they eat so much?  The Portuguese couple on the other side of me is also eating an entire cheese, then the same steak.

 

We’re huddled in together, lined up on stools at this lunch counter.  Food cannot be bad.  I ordered a special dish, Portuguese no nato, what they described as “Portugal on a plate”.  Fish and shrimp rice.  My cute waitress poured me several glass of the local vinho verde white wine and suggested a coffee at the end, smart her.  The rice was life-affirming, and my soul slowly returned to its upright position.

 

 

I gained the courage to eat more, at another stand: a seafood soup, and shrimp cooked a pool of murky garlic sauce that was mopped up by the bread they helpfully gave me.  More wine.  Masses of people gathered to eat together is a good thing but it has to be because of the food, not simply that it’s mealtime.  On my second round, I sat at a space in one of the long center tables with my pager, waiting.  Three Germans sat around me and we did what Euros do, discussed our meals.  “I’m very excited,” my neighbor said, about her goat cheese salade.  They asked me which stall I used to get my food, and I in turn asked a man diagonal from me about his cod dish, which looked brilliant.  He pointed to the end stall, and that would have been my third course if it was possible.  We all drew together, comparing dishes, stalls, choices.  The conversation was about little but the food around us and how to make the best of it, evaluating past choices and future eating plans.  You are served on real plates, silverware, glasses.  Nothing is plastic or otherwise disposable here.

 

 

A few days ago, I was in the shopping mall near where I live, just outside Washington, DC.  Walking through their food court, temptation was absent.  There are a few options there that wouldn’t be utterly abhorrent — Mediterranean, teppanyaki, sushi.  One side just had McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, and Taco Bell, the best of America.  People were gathered here together to eat, but you know they weren’t comparing choices in the same way.

Though I’m not a cur about it, I’m still an unapologetic food snob.  We all should demand more from our meals and when we can eat better, we should.  It makes one happy.  It’s not that I can’t enjoy junk food in some post-ironic way; I can and do.  But some things are simply better.  There are destinations around the world, such as Macau and Singapore, that don’t have many sights per se but are absolutely worth visiting just for the food.  I see amazing mall food courts all the time in various places around the world.  No one is back home in Portugal writing a blog post about the wonderful food court in the American mall.

 

But back in Lisbon, after close to four hours eating and exploring the Ribeira market, I step outside into the now-clear skies.  The rain had stopped and the day had cleared to do other things.  I was dry and full.  My mood had lifted and my stomach was happy.  The trip was going wonderfully so far.

 

Your bartender awaits you at the market

 

Mercado da Ribeira (Time Out Market)

Address:  Av. 24 de Julho 50, Lisboa, Portugal

Subway stop:  Cais do Sodré

Hours:  Sun – Wed: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm | Thu – Sat: 10:00 am – 02:00 am

Website: www.timeout.com/city-guides/time-out-mercado-da-ribeira-lisbon

 

 

If you’re interested in Portugal, see why Belem is a Tourist Abyss, why you absolutely need to listen to Fado music in Lisbon, and why you should visit the little town of Tomar.  And don’t get stuck in a boring home base town, like I did.