Lisbon Food Tour With Eating Europe: My Honest Review

Is the Eating Europe Lisbon food tour worth carving a few hours out of a short trip? Yes!

This was actually my 3rd Eating Europe tour, and just like the other two, it turned into one of my favourite things I did on the whole trip.

Here’s what most people want to know before they book though.

Do you actually end up eating where Lisboetas eat, or do you get walked round the same five restaurants every guidebook recommends, take a few photos and call it a day?

We spent the afternoon at tables next to Portuguese locals, which tells you most of what you need to know.

So if you’re heading to Lisbon for a few days and trying to work out whether a food tour earns its place in your itinerary, here’s my honest take.

TL;DR: Yes, I’d book it. Local tascas instead of tourist traps, a Mozambican restaurant I never expected to stumble on in Lisbon, and pastel de nata still warm from the oven, this one earns its spot in your itinerary. Book Eating Europe’s Lisbon food tour here →

The Tour (What’s Included)

We met our guide right in the centre of Lisbon, easy enough to find, and after quick introductions, headed straight to our first stop.

There were about 11 of us, small enough that I actually got to talk to everyone!

⏱️ How long you need: Set aside a good chunk of the afternoon for it.

Over the next few stops we worked through a proper cross-section of what Lisbon actually eats: a bifana and chouriço at a local tasca, Mozambican samosas in Mouraria, a sit-down seafood and bacalhau lunch, and pastel de nata to finish.

That’s the whole point of these tours for me: they skip the places everyone already knows about for the local spots instead, so you get a real taste of what it’s like to eat in that city!

A couple of these stops have already earned a spot in my best restaurants in Lisbon guide.

I was staying a short walk from the meeting point, in the same area I ended up recommending in where I’d actually stay in Lisbon, having arrived on the bus from Porto to Lisbon the day before.

Our Guide

Our guide was Brazilian and had been living in Lisbon for 10 years by the time we met him, comfortable answering absolutely anything we threw at him.

It felt like a conversation with a friend who happens to know everything about the city, rather than a memorised script.

What stuck with me most was the local knowledge beyond the food: which restaurants had been run by the same family for decades, which streets used to have a rough reputation and don’t any more.

He’s the reason I’d never have found half of what’s on this list on my own!

1. Bifana, Chouriço and Vinho Verde at a Local Tasca

Older men were coming and going for their coffee at the bar when we walked in, the kind of local tasca with big tables inside and small ones out on the pavement, run by the same guy for years by the look of it.

We started with a bifana, the classic Portuguese pork sandwich, and I’m half Dutch, so I went heavy on the mustard.

The bread was properly fresh and soft, which matters more than you’d think when the filling is really just meat, so I added mustard and piri-piri sauce to stop it from being dry.

This was the first bifana I’ve had and I really enjoyed it!

We also tried chouriço à bombeiro, “fireman’s chorizo,” which despite the name isn’t spicy at all, lit on fire at the table and eaten once the flames die down.

To drink there was vinho verde, “green wine,” poured on tap like a beer rather than out of a bottle.

It isn’t actually green, but instead it’s named for the colour of the grapes when they are picked to make the wine.

It was slightly sparkling and properly refreshing, and I can see why it’s the house drink of half of Lisbon!

2. Mozambican Samosas at Cantinho do Aziz

I did not expect a Mozambican restaurant to end up being one of my favourite stops on a Lisbon food tour, but here we are.

Portugal’s old colonies left a real mark on what Lisbon eats, and Mozambique is one of them, so a Mozambican restaurant sitting right on the edge of Alfama, one of the best neighbourhoods in Lisbon to wander through afterward, makes more sense than it sounds like it should.

Second stop was samosas with homemade piri-piri, and these are nothing like Indian samosas, ours were filled with beef and chicken, which was the giveaway since beef isn’t something you’d normally find in an Indian samosa.

The beef one was my favourite, and honestly some of the best samosas I’ve ever had.

The restaurant’s been open for years and the staff were some of the friendliest we met all day, I’d genuinely go back on my own time to work through the rest of the menu.

The hot sauce on the side was properly hot, but the flavour underneath it was incredible!

I never would have known there was a Mozambican restaurant tucked into Lisbon, let alone found it myself.

3. Bacalhau à Brás and Octopus Salad at a Tasquinha

Bacalhau à brás was the single best thing I ate on this entire tour.

Third stop was a sit-down tasquinha not far from the fado bars: cow and goat cheese, olives and bread, then octopus salad, soft octopus in a fresh green sauce with cucumber, simple and good.

Then came the bacalhau à brás, salted cod with potato, which our guide told us is a real local favourite here, and loved by Messi himself!

The crunch of the potato against the saltiness of the cod just works, and this particular restaurant serves it with honey mustard on the side so you can mix through a bit of sweetness against all that salt.

We drank the restaurant’s own local red wine with it, and it was excellent!

I’d go back to this one on my own in a heartbeat.

4. Pastel de Nata, Fresh From the Oven

Pastel de nata is already my favourite dessert, so this last stop had a high bar to clear, and it cleared it easily: crunchy crust, custard still warm and gooey inside, clearly just out of the oven.

Our guide’s rule was simple: only buy pastel de nata somewhere that’s baking them constantly, because the second they go cold, they’re just not the same.

I took that tip and used it for the rest of my time in Lisbon, and it holds up every single time!

Learning the History Along the Way (Or, Why the Food Tastes Like This)

This tour was never really just about the food.

Portugal ran one of the largest colonial empires in the world for centuries, and Mozambique was part of that until 1975, largely why a Mozambican restaurant sits in the middle of Mouraria, one of Lisbon’s oldest and most multicultural neighbourhoods, rather than somewhere more obvious.

Vinho verde tells a similar story: it comes from the Minho region in the north, and despite the name, has nothing to do with the colour of the grapes, it actually just means “young wine,” drunk within months of bottling rather than aged, and the Vinho Verde region has made it this way since long before it was formally protected in 1908.

And bacalhau, salted cod, isn’t even a Portuguese fish, Portugal has almost none of its own, it’s all imported, yet it’s somehow become the most Portuguese dish there is.

That’s the kind of thing I never would have picked up wandering around on my own with a guidebook!

Wandering back through the narrow alleys afterward never felt unsafe, in line with what I found is generally true about how safe Lisbon is, and I’d book this again during the best time to visit Lisbon, when the group is smaller and the streets are less packed.

So, Is the Eating Europe Lisbon Food Tour Worth It?

Yes, without question.

Food tours are one of my favourite things to do in any new city, and this was my third with Eating Europe across three completely different countries.

I came away with a genuinely fuller picture of Lisbon than I’d have built on my own: restaurants I’ll go back to, a real sense of why the food here tastes the way it does, and my daughter next to me the whole way rather than separate bookings I’d have had to research myself.

If you’re mapping out your days here, I’ve slotted this tour into my 3 days in Lisbon itinerary.

My answer is simple: make the time for it, and I’m already trying to work out when I can get back to Lisbon to revisit that tasquinha on my own!

It is exactly the kind of afternoon that convinced me Lisbon is worth visiting more than once, and it pairs nicely with catching the sunset from a miradouro afterward, one of the things to do in Lisbon I would never skip.

Book Eating Europe’s Lisbon food tour here →

And if you’re in Naples or London, I highly recommend booking their other food tours there!