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The tour ends at
Casa do Alentejo (
5
)
,
a small building near Rossio Square that
comprises a library, a restaurant and a
cultural center. You navigate a maze of
mismatched rooms—this one rustic,
this one baroque—before ending up in a
sunny, lavishly detailed Islamic courtyard.
“I come here,” Miguel says, “and I change.”
Dinner tonight is in Bairro Alto, at
100 Maneiras Bistro (
6
)
. To get there, you
head a half-block from your hotel to the
Elevador da Gloria, a rickety yellow car-
riage that grinds and wheezes and spits
you out without ceremony. It’s wonderful.
Wonderful, too, is 100Maneiras. The décor
is playful and sophisticated, and the food
follows suit. A er you sit down, courses
appearwithalarming frequency, delivered
by a waitress with a wry smile: codfish
croquette, game pie with truffle sauce,
battered frog legs, fried sweetbreads,
mushroom riso o, suckling pig. You eat
the lot.
Your final stop is the nearby
Pavilhão
Chinês (
7
)
, a bar that doubles as amuseum
of bric-a-brac. You enter and work your
wayback througha series of rooms packed
with tin soldiers, toy animals, religious
statues, hats and trumpets. As youwander
around staring at the stuff, it occurs to you
that clu er is normal in Lisbon. From the
o eat ephemera on display at its cafés
to the relics clu ering its cathedrals, the
impulse to hoard is everywhere. You ask
the woman next to you about this. Are
Lisboans unusually nostalgic? “Well,” she
replies, “we are unusually sensitive to the
idea of loss.” You like that.
CHRIS WRIGHT
is a writer living in London
who is still trying to get that fado melody
out of his head.
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
MAY 2012
101