Casa Piriquita — Restaurant in Sintra

Adorable and delicious pastry shop in the heart of Sintra! It's certainly a bit touristy, but it absolutely deserves all the hype as the oldest and most traditional pastry shop in the city. I was waiting for my tour of the Palace of Regaleria to start, and stopping by Casa Piriquita seemed like the perfect way to spend my morning. I tried two of Sintra's classics -- the travesseiro and quejada. The travesseiro was delightful, especially when fresh and warm; the pastry was super soft in the center yet delightfully flaky, with a slight crisp on the outer layers. It melted in my mouth almost seconds after taking a bite, and the almond cream inside was tasty and not overly sweet. It truly lives up to its name (literally "pillow"). Equally impressive was the quejada, a tasty little cheese tart with a slightly chewy, springy texture. It's not very sweet and has a great cinnamon flavor; it's also quite small, so it's the perfect little two-bite treat if you don't want to have too much.

The store is quite popular, so it's very busy at all hours. However, they move quite quickly and efficiently, especially for the takeout counter. When you come in, squeeze your way over to the ticket machine on the wall to the right of the door, and then wait for them to call out your ticket number. There is a €5 minimum to use a credit card, so be sure to either have cash on hand or be prepared to buy a few pastries (not that that's hard -- they're absolutely delicious; our two pastries were €3,20,...

Casa Piriquita. It's famous and certainly popular. The amount of people taking photos of the front of this joint, with or without pastries in their hand are evidence of that.

Inside you'll find it crowded, but their ticket system means you'll be served in due time without any queue jumpers.

What should you buy? Well I'm going to tell you. No doubt you're here for the famous Sintra pastry of which I can't recall the name. You know the one. Rectangular thing. But that's going to be a waste of your time and euro.

Look I'm sure that as far as those things go, the ones at Piriquita are good, but they're just nothing special. I've had matchsticks (pastry with jam and cream) that did more for me than those.

So what should you get? Again I don't know the name, but they have these yellow, coconut covered balls, and some chocolate ones as well.

Forget everything else. Buy like 6 of each of those.

The flavour and texture are unreal. Proper memorable. I've got no idea why they aren't the big ticket item. Leave the overrated sintra pastry for the IG photo fiends and get something you'll actually be...

Wonderful pastries shame about the rude service! We had seen a UK tv travel programme where Michael Portillo enjoyed these pillow pastries and talked to the charming owner, descendant of Piriquita. Well I wonder if the owner knows how rude some of his staff are when representing his family business? We are polite and always respectful as tourists. We took a ticket from the machine because we were told that is the queuing system. Our number came up and passed immediately to the next so we held up our ticket and just said number 15 please. The man threw his hands up and said " Stop with the numbers already" and looked so disdainful. We ordered 2 pastries which he then threw into a bag and then insisted on us finding change or paying by card. The pastries were delicious but the experience left a very bad taste. Honestly f you don't want to work in the service industry and enjoy trying to humiliate your customers I would suggest alternative employment or get a life. Everyone else in Sintra was delightful...