The Best Sintra Restaurants

Many tourists only have time to squeeze in a day trip from Lisbon so they don’t have much time to experience the cuisine. But I encourage you to stay a little longer if you can because Sintra has some hidden gem restaurants (including Michelin star restaurants) worth trying. Here are my picks for the best Sintra restaurants for breakfast, lunch, happy hour, and dinner.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, jet setters and welcome to the jet set life podcast. I'm your hostess, Britney Ryan child, free travel content, creator, and blogger. I'm a curator of authentic and cultural travel experiences. And I want to help you be the same. Create a jet set life full of adventure and learn how to live life to the fullest with me as your travel.

Tune in each week for solo episodes and conversations with travel leaders, all about child free travel adults, only getaways travel guides, itineraries, and more. I am all about sharing, actionable, detailed tips and tricks for creating the jet set life of your dreams. So get ready to learn. Are you ready for takeoff?

Let's jump into today's. Hello, beautiful jet [00:01:00] setters. How are you this week? How is your September been? Has it been fun? Have you done some football, maybe some fall foliage watching, what do they call it? Leaf peeping. I think that's such a weird term. So let's not say that. Have you just enjoyed some of the nature?

I hope so. And we've got October just around the corner, which has become one of my favorite months of the year. I've always looked forward to Halloween and spooky season, but I don't know. Maybe it's something about just being reminiscent of my childhood, but I feel like in the past few years I've gotten more excited than usual for October.

Just the, everything that goes into it, the decor. The movies. I love the Halloween movies and yeah, I don't know. So I'm excited for this next [00:02:00] month. So this week we are talking about best restaurants in Sintra. If you are going to Sintra, I highly recommend that you try to go to at least one of these restaurants while you're there.

I realize that most tourists go to Sintra for just a day trip from Lisbon. And they don't have a lot of time to experience the cuisine. But if you can manage to stay a few extra days, I highly recommend it because Sintra actually has some hidden gem restaurants, including some Michelin star restaurants that are worth trying.

So I am going to go through some breakfast, lunch, happy hour and dinner recommendations for restaurants in Sintra and starting with breakfast, we're gonna go to Casa Piriquita. Casa Piriquita is a charming bakery with these pink walls and checkered floors. It's the perfect place to get pastel de natas which are.

Sweet Portuguese custard [00:03:00] tarts. You have to get 'em while you're in Portugal. And they also make other baked goods like Travis Ceros. Khas and no D Duda. Sorry, if I didn't say that. Exactly right. Portuguese language is a little bit hard for me to grasp. I kept wanting to pronounce it like Spanish.

But it's different. Portuguese has a lot more of this, like sh like kind of this sh sounds in a lot of their words and I don't tend to anticipate them when I read them, they don't seem like you would add that. So I usually pronounce it wrong, but anyway, you've gotta try the.

Baked goods in Portugal that they're known for now, this particular place, Casa Piriquita it has a very long history. It was founded in 1862, about 160 years ago. The bakery was run by a husband and wife team. Ma do [00:04:00] Santos and Constantia Gomez. The name per Aquita was actually the nickname for Constantia that king Charles or Carlos, the first gave to her Conia was very short.

She was a very short woman. And so king Carlos. Would frequent the pastry shop for KHA and he would call her Purita. So now Casa Piriquita is owned and run by the family's sixth generation. So it's a really cute spot to visit. Also good bakery and really cool historical place. Another place for breakfast would be Saudade.

It's a lovely cafe with beautiful rooms and delicious food. The decor is cute and colorful and overall ambiance is described as homey. It's conveniently located right near the Sintra train [00:05:00] station. So it, and it also offers a bed and breakfast. So it's part of, it's a cafe and it's part, bed and breakfast known as chalet Saudade.

And so it offers guests a perfect start to their day. If they wanna go there for breakfast but it's not exclusively open just to guests of the bed and breakfast. And it's also not just open for breakfast, but it serves other meals later end of the day, like hot sandwiches, Mon fish and fish soup, which are popular.

Another great spot. If you really wanna have a. Breakfast fit for royalty would be Seteais restaurant. And this is the restaurant located inside of Tivoli palace. On our first night in Sintra we stayed at this palace hotel and enjoyed a peaceful luxury luxurious breakfast before we checked. For breakfast, [00:06:00] there's a large indulgent display of buffet items, including yogurt, fruit, fresh honeycomb locks, local breads, pastries, cheeses, and more hot items, including egg dishes can be made to order.

And they can do any style. It was simply just a delightful dining experience in this room and because you've got these beautiful fresco walls. Lots of beautiful windows onto the courtyard, letting all out, letting in natural light, some chandelier. And so it's just a delightful way to start your day.

And so now we'll move on to lunch and I added Sintra terrace to the, this list. It's a modest tucked away top of spa, but it has pretty views. And I. I tried a couple other places in this area and I was not impressed. So I'll get around to that in a second, but I liked the [00:07:00] views here and I also felt like the complimentary bread was quite substantial.

And I was actually surprised at the portion sizes as well, because when you think tops bar, you think small bites, but I felt like we actually had decent portions for what we were paying for. We also found the service to be prompt which is very good. Portuguese culture is much more slow than what Americans are used to.

We're used to ordering and getting food like really fast outta the kitchen, but that is not how it is in Portugal for the most part, but Sintra terrace did have fairly prompt service. There's a place really close to it called Villa six and it had very good reviews. So we went there another day, but I was not impressed.

We were surprised that Villa six ended up having so much good reviews because we waited nearly an hour to be served. And then when they did serve [00:08:00] us, they like forgot half of our meal and we were like, screw it, just leave it off. It basically like threw off the rest of our day, what we had planned for that day.

The food itself was good that we had and the staff was friendly, but it just, it was not prompt at all and not accurate. So for those reasons, I didn't find Villa six to be worth it. So instead I recommend going to Sintra terrace because it had better views. It had better service and it had good food and it's, it was right near Villa six.

All right. Next, we have Villa not to be confused with Villa six, but we next we have Villa craft, beer and bread. This was one of the ones that I consider a hidden gem. We came here for happy hour and I tried a really good flight of six different beers from Villa craft. And since craft beer is such a trend in the us, I really didn't [00:09:00] expect that Sintra would be nailing craft beer, but I was really surprised.

I enjoyed a variety of the beers that they served and they have, things ranging. Light beer all the way to the dark beers and their pizzas smelled amazing. Like when you walk in there, you smell that fresh wood fire bread smell, and. I could have easily probably had the pizza, but we had been snacking that day.

So instead we just got a single appetizer, which was this spicy sardine bread. Now stay with me. I know it sounds weird and maybe gross , but first of all, sardines are very popular in Portugal and they're done very well. They're prepared differently than you would expect. Maybe and even. The size of them.

I think of sardines, like almost like anchovies, but they're different in Portugal. They're bigger. And anyway the [00:10:00] saltiness from the sardine combined with the spiciness of whatever oil that they prepared the bread with was just perfect. It was hot, it added heat, but it was not overpowering.

And the bread itself. Was just exactly how it smelled, like it was warm and fluffy. It had the right amount of crisp and. Oh my gosh, I don't know how else to describe it, but it was really good. I could have eaten so much more here, but we were full. So if if I ever go back, I would definitely make a stop here.

Now, if you're able to snag a small patio seat for one or two, then you can get a little bit of some hillside views of Sintra in the forest, in the buildings. So that's nice. But our group was four. So we had to sit. Which is fine. If you're one or two, then you can get away with a little patio seating.

Next we have Raiz [00:11:00] Sintra and hopefully I pronounce that correctly. It's R a I Z Sintra, and this is a rooftop terrace spot. That's perfect for cocktails and light bites. There's an indoor section, but the main draw of this really cute spot is the partially covered terrace that has string lights all over it.

Wifi is complimentary and pets are allowed, which makes this spot great for posting up and hanging out for a while. Maybe getting some work, done, catching the sunset, things like that. All right, moving on to happy hour. Now this next place is really not. It's a liquor store. It's called bar do be Bejo and it's.

really like a cocktail place. However, I wanted to include it because they offer wine tastings specifically port tastings and they are located with the perfect view of the national palace of Sintra [00:12:00] so when in Portugal you've gotta try some port wine, so we did exactly that. and I will say this port tasting was definitely on the pricey side more tourists forward, but I expected that because it was in a prime location, it was directly across from the national palace.

It was in the city center, which is highly central high traffic area. But that being said, I didn't mind paying a little bit more because we got to try four different ports, all aged at different time periods so we could taste the difference. And we could also see the difference of what happens to the port as it goes through additional aging.

And we had the great views. We had a server who helped explain to. To us, the port wine making process. So all in all, it was just a fun way to enjoy a port wine tasting. And I would recommend it another spot for happy hour. I recommend [00:13:00] is Dona Maria. It is the perfect place to stop for a cool refreshing beer.

After coming down the mountain from Pena palace or Castelo dos Mouros basically, if you. . So if a lot of people, what they do in Sintra is they visit pina palace and or Castelo dos Mouros. It's one of the most iconic landmarks in Sintra and Sintra is a very hilly place. So that palace is on the top of the hill.

A lot of people will just take like a shuttle down or take a took down, or you can walk back down. I, we took a took up and then walked back down. if you, when you walk down, you'll hit the top of the city center. And one of the top places that you hit when you've just got finished, gotten down the mountain and you're heading into the city.

One of the first places there is Dona Maria and this, so this [00:14:00] locate, this restaurant is located in a beautiful spot that has perfect views of the city including a national palace, which is again, another landmark. Now this restaurant is it does have formal dining and it's known for their formal dining, but they also have this beautiful casual terrace that you can enjoy a cocktail or some tops at.

So I thought this was the perfect place to have a refreshing drink, to have a beer, some snacks, and you could just enjoy the views and the breeze underneath the terrace umbrellas. There. One other place and it's not really a place, but it's something that you have to do. And that is try, Ginja.

And so you can visit these gua stands that are all over Sintra, as well as the rest of Portugal. So what did, what is it? It is a Portuguese liquor made by infusing Ginja berries. Or sour [00:15:00] cherries in alcohol with sugar, cloves and or cinnamon. So there's not really one particular place to try them at, but they're pretty obvious to see they're just these little stands.

They've got the bottles which is this deep, dark red color of liquor for cherries. And then you can actually try a shot of them in either milk, a milk, chocolate shot cup, or a white chocolate shot glass. So you try the little shot of this sour cherry liquor which is tasty, and then you can actually eat the shot glass because it's made of chocolate.

So it's just a really fun thing to try. I did like the taste of it, but I found it a bit medicinal like cherry cough medicine from, your childhood. So I wouldn't have a lot of it, but it is fun to do. And I would, it's cheap to try, so it's not necessarily, again, a happy hour thing, but it's.[00:16:00]

Maybe a fun thing to try and a fun souvenir for you to take home or for you to take to your family. And they can try it as well. All right. Moving on to dinner, we have Arola I loved my dining experience at Arola with the exception of some very obnoxious children that were extremely loud near. I was actually really disappointed by this aspect because Arola is a fine restaurant that requires reservations.

So you would think that the parents would've chosen a different restaurant on property because, okay. Let me explain. Arola is located inside of Pena longa resort. This is a Marriott property outside of the main area of Sintra. So it's still in Sintra, but you would need a taxi to get there unless you're staying at the resort.

but it's worth a trip regardless. So two of our friends were actually staying there. So we went over to them and had dinner with them that night. So there are multiple dining options on [00:17:00] this property. So you would hope and think that parents with extremely loud kids would not choose to be at a fine dining restaurant, but unfortunately they were, but we arrived as they were wrapping up their meals.

So it didn't last the entire evening. As soon as they were gone, it was really enjoyable. Now Arola is run by chef Serge Arola and he is a Michelin star chef. He has several pro several restaurants. Some are Michelin, some are not Arola is technically not, but it's queued up. Become one. And it's also the chef has already won those awards, so he knows how to make award-winning food.

And the menu features this creative and contemporary twists on Portuguese cuisine. So his approach to Mediterranean tops is just delicious. Jordan chose a giant meat dish. It was a big bone and ribeye, which is no surprise there , but I of course [00:18:00] tried the prefix menu, which I love. I love prefix menus because they tend to be really special, really well done.

And I feel like I get to try a variety of things. So we started with a delicious tropical passion, fruit mango martini drink, and it was insanely good. We actually asked the bartender how to make it and. Did make it for us and explained it, but he pretty much lost us after the third ingredient. because they, there were so many ingredients, but a lot of them, we hadn't even heard of in the us before a lot of them were ingredients that were more specific or more easily accessible in Portugal, but not the us.

So we would have to do some hunting for it. But if we ever wanna try to recreate it, I at least have a video recording of him making that. So next we had a simple but good kind of bruschetta type of dish, but what, one of the highlights was the dish that came next. It was this coconut shrimp with Curry sauce.[00:19:00]

Sounds simple, but it was insanely good. It just took you to a whole nother level, the sauce, plus the way that it was cooked. It was so perfect. Next was burrata which I love burrata. And it had, it was topped with these little like soy sauce, caviar or something. It was these little tiny looking.

It looked like caviar. It wasn't caviar. Oh, I remember it was this balsamic beads. They were like balsamic little orbs. And that would pop in your mouth like caviar, but it was basal vinegar or something like that. Basal dressing. It was so good. All right. Next for our mains, we had a fresh tos salad and we had traditional squid risotto which is a popular in Portugal.

Now the dark color of the risotto was a bit intimidating. I'm not gonna lie, but it was still. And finally our dessert was this fluffy, tropical ice cream. It was so bizarre. It was like this, there was ice cream in the [00:20:00] center, but it was surrounded by this like cream or something like a wispy froth.

It was so good. Anyway, obviously, if you want like a really unique, fun, fine dining experience, that's memorable. This would be a great moving back into the city center. Another great option that we found was Incomum. I didn't take any pictures there. UN I'm unfortunately of the food I should have, but I just was too hungry, The exterior is a bit deceiving because it looks super simple and straightforward. But don't let that fool you because as soon as you walk inside, you realize that it's like a super contemporary restaurant in Sintra and reservations are actually recommended. However, We were able to get in with just a tiny wait.

If there is a wait Incomum has a wine bar, right next door, that is part of the restaurant where you can actually hang out until your table is ready, which is a brilliant idea. I wish more restaurants had that. now [00:21:00] risotto is the true star of the show at this restaurant. We each, every person in our group of four actually tried different risotto dishes.

They were all equally phenomenal. My favorite probably had to be the one that Jordan picked, which was oxtail risotto. And I wouldn't think that I would have liked it, but it was cooked to perfection and had this amazing rich flavor to it. Now this last one I'm gonna throw it back on the list because we've already talked about it and that is yet again, the Seteais restaurant inside of Tivoli palace.

I couldn't not include this because. it's also very good for dinner. The reason why I included it a second time for dinner is that the dinner experience is actually a unique one in comparison to the breakfast experience, which is buffet style. So again, you can do a prefix menu here, but we chose to just order off the menu.

For starters, I actually recommend having a cocktail out on their terrace, the terrace [00:22:00] at this restaurant is so cozy and inviting it's covered. It has perfectly manicured, bright, colorful flowers lining the perimeter. It's every chair has this beautiful woven quilt on it, and it overlooks the lemon tree field and the pool and the backyard courtyard on the property.

We actually, while we were sitting there enjoying our cocktails, they we spotted a rogue peacock roaming about which was awesome. And that's another side note cent. Other places in Portugal actually have roaming peacocks . So as you sip your cocktail, the server brings out these three small dishes of complimentary nuts chips and salty snacks for you to enjoy.

And then we had a little fire, it was a little bit chilly. So we had this fire lamp thing near us. So it's just pure bliss. It's peaceful. There's a gentle breeze blowing through. That's where you need to start. Then when your reservation is ready, you can either stay on the terrace [00:23:00] or you could come inside for dinner.

I chose to come inside for dinner just because I really liked the room. Like I said before, it has this fresco paintings on the walls, and it's very elegant with chandeliers and things like that. Now the meals are prepared and displayed beautifully as they come out. So in general, it's just a really special experience to dine by candlelight in a palace.

With fresco walls and luxurious tapestries, need I say more so I would love to know if you've been to Centra. What would you add to this list? If you have other restaurants that you've been to, that you loved in Sintra, I'd love to know what they are. Let me know on social media or pop over to my blog and leave a comment.

and if you haven't been, I'd love to know which of these sounds best to you. Thank you guys for listening and I will talk to you soon. Cheers.

If you enjoyed this episode and you wanna dive even [00:24:00] deeper into creating your jet set life, start with upgrading your travel bucket. You can download my free resource on the top 50 destinations for child free travel by visiting jet setting. blonde.com/start-here, because the first step to creating your jet set life starts with upgrading your travel goals.

And if something in today's episode really resonated with you, please screenshot and tag me at the jet set blonde on Instagram or. I wanna know what your biggest takeaway was. I really wanna hear from you. And it means so much to me when I can see your screenshots of you listening to the podcast or reading my posts online, every screenshot and review means the world to me.

I read every single one, and I really appreciate your support in listening to this episode and supporting me on this adventure. [00:25:00] I look forward to bringing you more awesome and genuinely helpful content that will help you create the jet set life of your dreams.[00:26:00]