5 Best Restaurants in Chiado and Bairro Alto, Lisbon

This restaurant's name translates to "There's Fish Here," and indeed it's one of the top places in town to savor the catch of the day, served fried, grilled, or roasted. Dinner attracts a youngish crowd, who enjoy options like cuttlefish with black rice and saffron mayonnaise. For diehard carnivores, there's Brazilian picanha. The dining room is also a classic, set beneath wide arches.

Renowned chef José Avillez has created his own foodie "neighborhood" incorporating two restaurants, a pizzeria, and a bar that serves snacks. The airy, more formal Páteo serves classic Portuguese dishes, while the more casual Taberna offers a wide range of fine local cheeses as well as intensely flavored small plates presented with flair. Then there's Pizzaria Lisboa for great thin-crust pies, and Mini Bar, a hidden and dimly lit night spot in an atmospheric former chapel, for fancy drinks and snacks, with live music and DJs Wednesdays through Saturdays.

Dating from 1905, Lisbon’s most famous café maintains its dazzling Art Deco interior, though you'll probably prefer to take a quick peek and then settle in at one of the tables outside to watch the lively street scenes unfold. The coffee no longer comes exclusively from the former colony that gave the place its name, but it's some of the best in town (it even features in the sauce on the house steak) alongside tasty cakes, pastries, and artfully presented seafood dishes. A few doors down, Pastelaria Bénard is an even longer-established example of Chiado's old-world cafés.

This rustic restaurant was established in a former bakery and has kept the building's original large brick baking oven and stone arches. It serves well-presented classic Portuguese cuisine and a few original dishes from a menu evenly divided between meat and fish options.

In a building that was once part of a religious foundation and later a factory, this smart space mixes the traditional and the contemporary; the same can be said about the food, which comprises reinvented Portuguese snacks such as mussels escabeche and slow-stewed moelas (chicken gizzards). Among desserts, the most famous is the Dona cheese tart—ordered by the slice, or whole to take away—and there is a good wine list, too.