Lisbon by Plate

Drop your bags, open the windows and let the sound of trams orient you. Chiado or Príncipe Real make ideal bases for this food-first trip — central enough to walk almost everywhere.

Start as the locals do — standing at the counter of this Chiado bar with a bica and whatever the pastry shelf is offering. It is the kind of place that has been doing exactly this, without fuss, for decades.

The iron lattice of this neo-Gothic lift, designed by a pupil of Eiffel, connects the Baixa to the Carmo neighbourhood above. Ride it for the engineering as much as the view — you can see straight across the terracotta roofscape to the castle.

Walk down to the grand riverfront square that once served as Lisbon's ceremonial gateway to the world. The yellow arcades, the triumphal arch and the Tagus opening out in front of you make this one of the great public spaces in Europe — worth walking through slowly rather than crossing in a hurry.

The name means 'there is fish here' and the kitchen takes that mandate seriously. This Chiado restaurant is the right place to begin the trip's seafood thread — well-sourced fish cooked without unnecessary ceremony, in the heart of the neighbourhood.

A short walk uphill into Bairro Alto brings you to one of Lisbon's most undervisited interiors — a Jesuit church whose chapel of St John the Baptist contains some of the most extravagant decorative stonework in the city, much of it assembled in Rome and shipped in pieces.

Porto wine by the glass, chosen from a list that spans the full range of styles from dry white to ancient tawny — this Príncipe Real institution is the definitive place to understand what the Douro puts in a bottle. Settle in for a slow pre-dinner hour.

Chef Ljubomir Stanisic's tasting menu restaurant is one of Lisbon's most discussed dining rooms — a place where the cooking is inventive without losing sight of the Portuguese pantry. An ideal first-night dinner for a trip built around eating seriously.

Take a free morning wander through Cais do Sodré, stopping at whichever pastelaria window catches your eye. The neighbourhood runs right into the Time Out Market, Lisbon's celebrated food hall, where the city's best chefs share a single enormous roof — a perfect introduction to grilled fish, local cheeses and Portugal's tinned-fish culture all in one sitting.

The old Tejo power station, now a major contemporary art and architecture museum, sits right on the riverbank just west of Cais do Sodré. The industrial turbine hall alone is worth the visit, and the new building's curved white roof doubles as a public terrace over the water.

Head east to Graça for lunch at this neighbourhood restaurant, where the cooking is rooted in the kind of straightforward, produce-led recipes that Lisbon's grandmothers would recognise. It is the ideal place to eat grilled fish in a room where the conversation is entirely in Portuguese.

Walk down from Graça into Alfama and arrive at the Sé, the oldest church in the city, begun in 1147 on the site of a mosque. The Romanesque towers and the Gothic cloister — where archaeological excavations have exposed Roman and Moorish layers beneath — reward careful looking.

Deep in Alfama, this restaurant is one of the most respected fado houses in the city. The music begins after dinner, performed by musicians who take the tradition seriously. A long evening of wine, salt-cod and the sound of the city at its most itself.

Take tram 15E or the train from Cais do Sodré westward along the river to Belém. The journey runs along the waterfront with the Tagus on your left the whole way — a good start to a morning in the city's most monumental neighbourhood.

Built on the profits of the spice trade and consecrated in 1502, the Jerónimos Monastery is Manueline architecture at its most ambitious — the cloisters in particular, with their carved ropes, armillary spheres and sea creatures, feel like the ocean translated into stone. Allow at least an hour.

A short walk along the riverbank brings you to the Torre de Belém, the fortified tower that served as the last landmark Portuguese sailors saw as they left for the Indies. The carved rhinoceros at the base of one of its battlements — a reference to an animal gifted to King Manuel I — is one of Lisbon's great small surprises.

Take a breath and a slow walk back along the river toward Santos, stopping for a pastry or a sandwich at whichever pastelaria window presents itself. No agenda — just the Tagus and the afternoon light.

Portugal's largest museum of fine art houses the most important collection of Portuguese painting from the 15th and 16th centuries, including Nuno Gonçalves's extraordinary Panels of St Vincent — a polyptych that contains what may be the only painted portrait of Henry the Navigator. The azulejo gallery and the applied arts rooms are equally absorbing.

End the trip at this Príncipe Real bar-restaurant where fado often breaks out between courses and the wine list leans deep into the Alentejo. It is the kind of table where the evening extends well past the last plate — exactly the right note on which to close three days of eating seriously in Lisbon.