O Regueirão — Restaurant in Lisbon

This is Marta. She owns a restaurant in Lisboa called O Regueirão. We were hungry and wandered into this place on a whim. Small, quaint, and not a lick of English being spoken, which is always a great sign. The food was phenomenal. There was a language barrier, but that didn’t stop us from having a lovely conversation with her about her “why”. Our waiter said that Anthony Bourdain once visited her small labor of love, and she had no idea who he was. I’m sure they both preferred it that way.

She insisted she wasn’t a chef because she didn’t go to culinary school, yet she had been in kitchens since she was 11 years old. Ryley assured her that you don’t need to have a degree to achieve excellence in food. The entire experience was precious to us. Not only was the food, service, and ambience just what we needed, so was our brief encounter with this sweet, talented woman.

This is her, not holding up a peace sign, but exclaiming, “dua...

The food is good, don't get me wrong. Nevertheless watch out: they have two different rooms, one for locals and one for tourists. As I was with a foreign friend, for whom I had promised " a true portuguese Tasca", they sent me to the tourist room, where the menu is only in English and you are not allowed to choose the menu of the day, only the expensive dishes... the waiter was nice, but you could see that he was trained to sell us the tourist dishes. After some discussion (in which he even said "no, this option is only for those sitting on the other room'), we were finally able to get the daily (cheap) menu, but they didn't even bother to bring us the starters (olive, bread, etc...) which are complimentary during lunch time... very...

came highly recommended by a local who stated “this is the best food i’ve had in lisbon”. all i can say is wow - easily one of the best meals of my life.

must try items are the fried prawns, clams, and octopus lagareiro. i would sell my unborn first born to be able to have unrestricted access to those prawns back home. also the octopus was the most tender octopus i’ve had in my life (seriously, i didn’t know octopus had the capacity to be that tender). also an unexpected favorite were the potatoes that came with the octopus: absolute delicious lil nuggets of gold

to top everything off, the chef/ owner marta is also an absolute gem. this woman must be protected...