Bar Alimentar, Lisbon - Portugal
It's the best place to put your phone down and have a blast with the gals.
Please refer to my brief guide on how to write restaurant reviews to see how this was crafted. Raging Restaurant Reviews are usually published on Wednesdays, just a few Fridays, so we want to go out. Also, I do not usually write reviews, so be prepared for chronicles and essays about restaurants in this section, too.
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Fun dining is back in style - at least at Bar Alimentar in Lisbon (R. Nova da Piedade 62) because, let’s be frank - you do not need nor want to endure a fine-dining menu in a quiet restaurant with waiters hovering over your shoulders to refill your water glass when you just wanted a date out with your girlfriends to talk shit about your jobs, share funny updates about boyfriends, pets and kids, worry about our parents, and make vacation plans (yay!).
Enter Bar Alimentar, which is just that: a bar with food.
But wait: all of it with tables with tablecloths and candles, because you dress up to go out and dress up nicely. Most of us lounge all day in pyjamas or athleisure while working on a laptop, so we enjoy playing dress up for our gals.
Cocktails flow, and even if the bar menu is named after obscure Italian football players of another time that most likely no one in the audience knows, nobody really cares, and everybody happily drinks. Ans repeats. With a considerably feminine clientele and few men in couples or groups with many ladies, the vibe is salmon-pink rather than gym bro-black.
The menu is short, on point and crowd-pleasing.
There’s everyone’s favourite (and least scary) veggie: pumpkin (of course).
There are some crowd-pleasing croquettes, and there’s something vaguely crunchy that could be a bruschetta (but instead, here, it is called brioche because it is more in fashion ATM in Lisbon with its French crowd).
There’s a seafood crudo (Puglia or Peru, whatever) and tartare (apparently, the lean girl’s best friend). Of course, primi are in an Italian-inspired joint, which comes just before the dessert: risotto and ravioli.
Easy, peasy, not too much lemon squeezy because the most prominent taste you find in the plates is sweet - a lot of caramelised onion everywhere, a lot of creamy cheeses, and a dusting of gremolata and lemon peel for the fun of it.
The food is Italian-ish, the most fashionable type in vogue right now.
It’s a foreigner’s dream of a picture-perfect Italian night out in Milan, in Lisbon, where ex-pats and remote workers now temporarily reside - or that is my guess.
Bar Alimentar belongs to the same universe as Tricky’s, another successful expat and foreigner spot in Lisbon.
Their powerhouse behind these successful enterprises is João Magalhaes Correia, a local entrepreneur who lived for seven years in Milan and wanted to be a lawyer until he started cooking for his friends.
He is not a snob, catering only to foreigners. Portuguese gastronomic media and patrons quite like him.
According to a recent interview, his first cooked meal was Esparguete com bacon, salsicha de lata e natas - exactly Bar Alimentar's spirit. To Visão, he declared: “ Não digo que é italiano para não ofender os puristas, prefiro dizer que é italianizado, feito à minha maneira e com ingredientes portugueses”.
His other place, Àgua Pela Barba, was one of the few places I went to and loved back in 2018 when I came to live in Lisbon - for reference, the other places I loved back then, and I was a regular, were Prado, Sal Grosso and Peixola.
He (and his business partners) own the vision and can capture the moment well: both in Bar Alimentar and Tricky’s you find the places you want to be if you are hype, a foreigner or a local with disposable income, and do not belong to the puticlub-Marbella crowd crowding places such as JncQuoi or Seen.
In this universe, you come for fun, not just to take pictures of the food - which is nevertheless gluttonous, simplified along the sweet-salty axis, and yet pleasurable. You feel like you are eating, not performing as a customer. You can have crunchy Sicilian cannolo filled with a velvety baccalá mantecato and topped with an ever-so-slightly too-big pistacchi.
You can also taste a bruschetta called brioche because this is the beauty of it; nothing matters. You are not a foodie; you are a socialite, a lifestyle Instagrammer, or simply someone on a night out, yapping happily with your friends.
You are not a purist of Italian dining (whatever that is, as I wrote in an earlier post), even if Portuguese critics consider it highly representative of Italian culinary.
It is not a place suitable for vegans. Still, vegetarians can find respite and, of course, everyone’s darling: pumpkin, without its spice latte, but with some tangy lemon, ever-so-sweet caramelised onion and a pool of gooey cheese.
A savoury version of a latte, a plate that lulls your childish side, cuddling your younger Millennial and elder Gen Z tastes, and that is precisely what you and your girlfriends like, especially if you are younger than 30. Or 40.
Along the same lines, there are caramelised onion-filled ravioli.
The ravioli are pitch perfect: thin dough, good filling, and another pool of melted dairy to complete a dish that, if a bit infantile, is ideally attuned to Gen Z palates and the need for uncomplicated dining options to be the backdrop, not the centre stage, for a night out.
This risotto is the Portuguese interpretation of itself, with an unnecessary (for the taste) but needed (to justify the price and top tickle the sense of a carpaccio-and-crudo-loving gal crowd) shrimp of some sort, carpaccioed.
It takes away all flavours of a somewhat bland but very on-point risotto. And, the Chef confessed, made with excellent materials: he also uses Riserva San Massimo, the Ferrari of Carnaroli rice.
Rita Geraldes said, “There’s good energy everywhere, even though there's little to no electric lighting in the dining room but rather white candles burning on every table and empty wine bottles lining the white walls”.
Per magic minimalism standards, the place looks fancy and at the same time shabby-chic. Still, with some cheap details, it was put together in just one month, according to the owner, who is still working on it (the Italian umarell would say “work never ends”). There are no architectural touches (thank goodness, another floral chair in Lisbon and nautical pattern, and I would scream), but a thick layer of white paint covers it all and lets its diners shine. No wonder this place reminds me a bit of the height of Berlin’s charm.
Did I like it? Absolutely yes.
Lacerda wrote that it is a cocktail bar with some food, and I do not disagree—but it is a bit more than that.
Ultimately, Bar Alimentar is the perfect backdrop for a night out.
I was there as a couple, perched at the miniature counter, squeezed with other couples and one solo diner who ate (and drank - he downed two cocktails and one bottle all by himself) most of us all combined, scooping through the whole menu and even going for the dessert (tiramisu, ça va sans dire).
We had mad fun—even if I just had a Sicilian blood orange soda (so White Lotus, last season) because I did not want to drink it, and the menu offered no non-alcoholic cocktails (which I also did not ask for). Hubby had a Negroni and lovely wines while I sipped my soda and complimentary water.
The bill was lovely (around 45 euros each), and we were dined and out by ten, having chosen the first of the two turns at dinner.
A blessing these days: you are here by midnight, and your Millennial or Gen Z ass can be up for Pilates or a run at 7.
Night out at RYOSHI
I had the pleasure of meeting Chef João and his brigade at RYOSHI. Resident Chef Lucas Azevedo invited them to celebrate their birthdays (his and his restaurant’s).
At this dinner, they shared the effort to combine a sensible menu, and I had the pleasure of being served a delicious risotto twice.
It was a truly luscious bite, combining the Portuguese classical flavour of arroz de tomate in an elevated version of an Italian risotto and topped with Japanese flavours of nori algae and cured mackerel bits.
Wow.
I liked Chef Magalhães’ uncomplicated outlook on Italian cuisine and his playful approach, which has nothing to do with cultural appropriation but instead is the perfect example of someone who is absolutely in love with Italian dining and shows it by creating dishes that make sense, are gluttonous, and wink at the Chef’s taste and background.
An authentic, epic fusion cuisine, a true fusion Chef - and a very charming one, capable of articulating gastronomic discourses without losing a beat in swirling the risotto pan. We share the same love for Riserva San Massimo, which is enough for all of you to know what concerns the care and attention to ingredients of his (and his team’s) work ethic.
A keeper!
