Sr. Lisboa - Playful Portuguese Cuisine in Lisbon

It’s not so easy to find a restaurant in Lisbon—or anywhere—that manages to be playful and eccentric without being high-concept and overthought. So it comes as a very pleasant surprise to come across Sr. Lisboa, among the touristy restaurants on Rua de São José.

The name is a bit funny—a formal title for a place run by a 20-something chef, Pedro de Sousa, whose style is rigorous but irreverent. It’s intimate, with 35 seats, but lively, with a welcoming atmosphere. Sousa is out to feed friends, friends of friends, and new friends (aka clients). It’s helped along by the equally young front-of-house man, Francisco Breyner, who keeps the dinner party going.

Many of Sousa’s petiscos—you’re meant to share everything here—were born as Portuguese classics. Then he starts playing. The result is both tasty and amusing. He makes a fine polvo (octopus) chimichurri, using an herbaceous sauce that doesn’t usually share a plate with octopus. His ovos revoltados (scrambled eggs) begin with a fashionable low-temperature egg before he adds mushrooms, cubed potatoes, crunchy farinheira and truffle oil.

(above top) Ovos Revoltados, (above) Vulcão de Bacalhau

My favorite, both for the name and for the flavors, was the “promiscuous cauliflower,” so called because the vegetable got around to several different cooking stations and mixed with a few condiments. The result is a plate with gratinated cauliflower, cauliflower mousseline, crunchy onion and cardamom and beetroot jam.

The decoration is likewise playful, tending toward pots, pans, wooden cooking spoon and even stoves hung on the wall. It, along with the tasty food, makes Sr. Lisboa one of those places where it’s easy to eat well and hard to have a bad time.