Cervejaria Liberdade at Tivoli Avenida Hotel

Truth be told, an authentic cervejaria among the posh precincts of Avenida Liberdade seemed like an unlikely idea. So, it came as a pleasant surprise that when the Tivoli Avenida Liberdade hotel turned the long-running, old-school French restaurant, Brasserie Flo, into a Portuguese seafood hall, now called Cervejaria Liberdade, they pulled it off.

To be sure, this is not the messy, gleeful gluttony of an evening at Ramiro. Waiters will make sure you have plenty of wet wipes. But it’s still a classic and faithful Portuguese cervejaria, with top-quality seafood, traditional less-is-more preparations, and olive oil, garlic and coriander galore.

While they kept the basic looks of Brasserie Flo, they remodeled the room to put a seven-meter-long counter in the middle of it, on which they display piles of their fresh shellfish—oysters from the Aveiro Estuary, prawns from Espinho, carabineiro shrimps from the Algarve. You can have a beer and some clams—or the dripping prego that is a staple of cervejarias—at the bar or a business lunch at one of the tables. (You can eat a cataplana or seafood rice in polite company.) All of it arrives daily from Portuguese waters.