Pastéis de Belém

In Belém, a few hundred metres from the Jerónimos Monastery: Pastéis de Belém. Above the door it says “desde 1837”.

The story starts at the monastery. When Portugal closed its monasteries in 1834, the Jerónimos recipe began to be sold in the sugar refinery next door, and in 1837 a bakery was set up here. The recipe has not changed since, and is still made in what they call the secret room, known only to a handful of master confectioners. The name is registered too: everywhere else in the city the same pastry is a pastel de nata — Pastéis de Belém exist only here.

Inside is far bigger than it looks from the street. A counter at the front with people eating standing up, then room after room opening into each other: plasterwork ceilings, blue and white tiles, chequerboard floors. For a table you have to queue, but the part where you eat standing up is both the more charming end of it and much quicker.

The pastries come out of the oven warm; the cinnamon and the icing sugar sit on the table and you dust them yourself. The custom is to order a bica — a Portuguese espresso — alongside.

There is more than pastéis in the cabinets: bolas de Berlim filled with cream, the Portuguese classics built on egg yolk, small fruit tarts. And on the shelves, port and ginja.

Address: R. de Belém 84-92, 1300-085 Lisbon.