The up-and-coming, terroir-obsessed wine distributor Os Goliardos is reached through a tiny alley that opens into a courtyard behind an apartment block in Campolide, a residential Lisbon neighborhood just north of the Amoreiras shopping mall. The company keeps a low profile, hiding Lisbon’s greatest wine storeroom in a narrow garage that counts several auto body shops as its neighbors. Since they keep odd hours, we were told to find a mechanic named Senhor Rui who would let us in with his key to pick up our order. We looked for him in a dark garage, where a man sat, listening to fado on the radio, beside a distressed Fiat. Wrong mechanic. Suddenly a large, smiling man in work clothes appeared in the yard jangling a set of keys.

Rua das Portas de Santo Antão is probably the most touristy food street in Lisbon. This pedestrian road is full of restaurants with guys outside hawking their specials and menus offering out-of-season sardines and frozen pizzas. But there’s more to this downtown thoroughfare than just luring American vacationers to overpriced mediocrity. Located on this road, buzzing even before the tourist boom thanks to its central location, musical theaters and local commerce, is one of the city’s timeless classics, O Churrasco. This restaurant looks different from the usual chicken restaurant, with impressionistic paintings hanging from its wooden walls and waiters in bow ties, and has been a camouflaged gem for many years, a particular favorite of middle-class families and theater lovers.

While the pandemic has forced many restaurants in Lisbon to shutter their doors, even if only temporarily, and fight for their survival, it left chef Marlene Vieira with a related yet slightly different dilemma: Her latest venture, Zunzum Gastrobar, was scheduled to open in March, before being postponed indefinitely due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The delay worried Vieira – so much work had already gone into the project. As the city started coming back to life, the chef assessed the situation and felt it was better to open in the beginning of August rather than waiting for September, when the reopening of schools and other measures might bring new challenges to everyday life. “Now it’s a relaxed time, people are on holidays or feeling less stressed,” she says.