Time Out Market Lisbon: Must-Try Dishes & Food Stalls

Time Out Market Lisbon poses a challenge for food travelers who enter its doors – too many choices. Discover the best stalls at Lisbon’s most popular food hall and the best things to eat at each stall.

A top Lisbon attraction, the Time Out Market typically swarms with hungry crowds queuing for food and filling tables, especially during the warm summer months. Tourists love the market for what it is – a safe, clean place to sample a variety of dishes without the stress of translating menus, navigating maps and leaving tips.

After we moved to Lisbon in January of 2019, we avoided eating at Time Out Market Lisbon. While we appreciated the market’s culinary concept of curating food from first-in-class restaurants around the country, we chose to spend our time exploring the city’s vibrant restaurant scene instead.

Don’t get us wrong. The Time Out Market is NOT a tourist trap, but it’s definitely more popular with people visiting Lisbon than it is with locals who live in Portugal. As Lisbon residents, we’re easily able to find dining experiences with cloth napkins and flowing wine for a fraction of the price.

Discover our top tips for eating in Portugal.

However, it’s no exaggeration to say that Time Out Market Lisbon is packed from the minute it opens until the time it closes. Our current approach is to avoid peak hours, which attract the largest crowds. Our best tip in this regard is to arrive when the market opens at 10am and grab a table right away. And, since the market stays open until midnight, another option is to arrive after the dinner crush.

In other words, we’ll keep eating at Lisbon’s Time Out Market – just not at peak hours.

Time Out Market Lisbon co-occupies a grand 19th-century market hall in Lisbon’s riverfront Cais do Sodré neighborhood. This building is conveniently located across the street from both the ferry terminal and a metro station. It’s also accessible by tram, bus and Uber.

Mercado da Ribeira, the building’s original tenant, occupies half of the building. With a history dating back centuries, this traditional Lisbon food shed was a major shopping hub in the city after the devastating 1755 earthquake.

Today, most Lisbon locals shop at neighborhood markets, chain grocery stores and Saturday bio markets like the Mercado Biológico do Príncipe Real. While you’ll see locals filling up bags of fresh fish and a variety of produce at Mercado da Ribeira, the local market isn’t as busy as it was in prior years.

Pro Tip
Shop early in the day and bring a canvas bag if you plan to buy seasonal fruits and vegetables to enjoy at your Lisbon hotel or apartment. We especially love buying fresh fish and seafood at Mercado da Ribeira.

Opened by Time Out Lisboa Magazine in 2014, Lisbon’s Time Out Market isn’t a typical Lisbon market. Instead, it’s a modern food hall with dozens of stalls serving savory food, sweet desserts and liquid libations.

Some of these stalls showcase cuisine created by innovative Michelin-starred chefs. Other stalls feature more humble Portuguese dishes while yet others focus on a range of eclectic global cuisines.

Pro Tip
Bring your credit card when you eat at the Time Out Market. The market is a cash-free zone. Another option is to buy a rechargeable card at the on-site Time Out Shop.

Most of the action occurs on the ground floor inside the market’s grand hall. Stalls line the periphery of the market while kiosks and tables fill the center.

Fun Fact
Time Out Market Lisbon has been so successful that the magazine empire has opened similar markets in Bahrain, Barcelona, Boston, Cape Town, Chicago, Dubai, Miami, Montreal, New York, Osaka and Porto.

Lisbon’s Time Out Market reminds us of sprawling food halls we’ve visited in cities like Amsterdam and Budapest. Though the vibe skews hipster, the range of food is varied enough to provide an introduction to the Lisbon restaurant scene to all visitors regardless of age or hipness.

This is a market where a group of four can eat bacalhau à brás, Neapolitan pizza, pad thai and sushi at the same table while chugging beer and sipping Port wine. It’s also a market where kids of all ages can munch on pastéis de nata and lick creamy ice cream cones.

In terms of pricing, we’d rate the market as moderate. Eating here won’t break the bank, but it’s certainly not cheap compared to the city’s many value-priced tascas and bifana stands. But it’s also less expensive than eating at the best restaurants in Lisbon, some of which have stalls at the market.

Pro Tip
Budget at least €20 per person for a dish, dessert and drink. However, you’ll spend more if you order extra items or if you order higher-priced items like sushi and pizza.

We appreciate that the market’s diversity of options can be overwhelming to people unfamiliar with Portuguese food and the country’s top chefs. That’s why we created this handy-dandy guide with market highlights and photos of the dishes that we’ve enjoyed eating at the Lisbon Time Out Market.

Discover Portuguese food and drink favorites.

For ease of use, we’ve separated our recommendations into the following six categories:

Since Time Out is a curated market, you can’t make bad choices. But some dishes are better than others. We suggest that you start with our favorites and then find your own.

Pro Tip
Use this guide as part of your meal planning process. You’ll be able to head directly to your chosen stalls and order food. Let’s face it, the more quickly you queue and pay, the more quickly you’ll be chowing down at a table.

Don’t be skeptical and think that these chefs are just lending their names without direct influence on the food. Au contraire. We randomly encountered two of these Portuguese top chefs overseeing their stalls while we were eating their food.

Pro Tip
There’s no need to limit your choices to large plates. Menus offer a mix of petiscos (snacks), large plates and sobremesas (desserts).

There are currently five Chef’s Kitchen stalls helmed by the following Portuguese chefs: Miguel Castro e Silva, Susana Felicidade, João Sá, Henrique Sá Pessoa and Marlene Vieira. These are our favorites:

Chef Miguel Castro e Silva

Miguel Castro e Silva studied piano as a child in Porto before trading musical art for culinary art. This switch paid off, with Silva achieving success and acclaim as a pioneer in modern Portuguese cuisine.

Eating at his Time Out Market stall provides an excellent opportunity to sample Silva’s food without traveling to Northern Portugal. Options include iconic dishes like bacalhau à brás and francesinha sandwiches as well as two of our personal favorites – arroz de polvo (octopus rice) and tártaro de atum (tuna tartare).

We loved Silva’s version of the working man’s francesinha. Silva serves a simple version with melty cheese topping layers of meat and bread smothered with ‘francesinha sauce’ that takes the humble Porto food favorite to a higher level.

What We Ate
Francesinha

Chef Henrique Sá Pessoa achieved fame by helming multiple Portuguese restaurants, making TV appearances, publishing cookbooks and winning awards. He earned two Michelin stars when he helmed Alma but don’t count out his self-named Time Out Market stall.

Unlike our €€€ meal at Alma in Lisbon’s Chiado neighborhood, a meal at Sá Pessoa’s market stall won’t cost an arm and a leg. Popular dishes include the chef’s suckling pig and his 64° Celsius egg served with prosciutto, asparagus and truffle oil potato purée.

What We Ate
64° Slow-Cooked Egg with Truffled Potato Purée, Prosciutto and Asparagus

Marlene Vieira is a champion of Portuguese cuisine. Her dedication started in Northern Portugal and continued when she cooked Portuguese food at a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York. Today, she shares her passion with customers at the Time Out Market in Lisbon as well as at Zunzum and the Michelin-starred Marlene, both located at the Lisbon Cruise Terminal.

Vieira proves that not all top Portuguese chefs are men while offering a fun selection of petiscos (snacks). Options include pataniscas de bacalhau (codfish fritters), camarão crocante (crispy wrapped shrimp) and cogumelos recheados (stuffed mushrooms).

What We Ate
Stuffed Mushrooms with Iberico Ham and Quail Eggs

Eating traditional Portuguese food is a must for all visitors to Lisbon. Though the cuisine isn’t as famous as Italian food or Greek food, Portuguese food in Lisbon is accessible, affordable and downright delicious.

Time Out Lisbon Market is a great place for first-time visitors to sample traditional Portuguese food favorites. Dishes like arroz de pato and bacalhau à brás are often available at the chef-driven stalls listed above. Another option is to try a dish or two at one of the following stalls:

Manteigaria Silva

More than an average delicatessen, Manteigaria Silva has been selling Portuguese products for over a century at its Baixa location and later at locations in Chiado, Belém and at the Time Out Market. Its offerings include cheese, charcuterie, bacalhau (salt cod), tinned fish and wine.

Visitors to Manteigaria Silva’s market stall can order charcuterie and cheese on boards, on salad and on toast. Channeling aperitivo sessions we’ve enjoyed in Bologna and Venice, we opted for a board with presunto grande reserva and a duo of Portuguese cheeses – Azeitão, a classic torta sheep cheese, and Brejo de Gaia, a red-wine-washed goat cheese.

Depending on your appetite, you can upgrade the size of your board. You can also choose a board with luscious pata negra ham if your budget has some squiggle room.

What We Ate
Mista Platter with Dry-Cured Ham and Cheese

If you really wish to understand the Lisbon restaurant scene, the clubby Café de São Bento, ‘hidden in plain sight’ just across the street from the Assembleia da República, Portugal’s Parliament building, is a great place to start. The restaurant’s claim to fame is its bife à Café de São Bento, a seemingly simple filet topped with a fried egg.

Eating the award-winning steak bathed in a rich white sauce at the market is a great option if you don’t score a reservation at the original location. We like to order ours medium rare at both spots. We also like the café’s prego sandwiches, which are available at the Time Out Market too – it’s one of Lisbon’s best sandwiches.

What We Ate
Bife do Lombo à Portuguesa
Prego Sandwich

Not every visitor to Lisbon has time to take a day trip to Cascais and eat fresh seafood with a view of the Atlantic Ocean. Monte Mar solved this problem when it opened two locations in Lisbon including a stall at the Time Out Market.

Eating Monte Mar’s Garlic Shrimp metaphorically transported us to the beach without the necessity of taking a train ride. The only two things missing were a view of the ocean and a spoon to scoop up the sauce.

What We Ate
Shrimp with Garlic, Olive Oil and Parsley

Open in Lisbon’s Chiado neighborhood since 2010, Sea Me embraces Portuguese snack traditions but with a nod to Japan and that country’s seafood precision. Diners at this upscale petisqueira (snack bar) can start their meal with grilled sardine nigiri and end it with tuna prego sandwiches.

At the Time Out Market, no dish better fuses Portugal’s love for snacks and seafood than Sea Me’s octopus hot dog. Easily eaten without utensils, this hot dog is unique. We liken it to a Portuguese take on a lobster roll. There’s now even a separate stall, Octo Dog, that sells different versions.

What We Ate
Octopus Hot Dog

Croqueteria stands out from the rest of the stalls inside the Lisbon Time Out Market. Not only is Croqueteria the only stall that sells an array of tasty croquettes, but it’s also the only stall that secured its spot via a competition.

While the entrepreneurs behind Croqueteria won the coveted prize, we felt like winners while sharing a trio of croquettes including both traditional and creative renditions.

At the time of our most recent visit, Croqueteria offered seven original flavors plus three special editions on its menu. We opted for two of the former and one of the latter.

While we enjoyed the inky cuttlefish croquette and meaty cozido croquette, we both agreed that the goat cheese croquette was our favorite. The combination of tangy goat cheese and sweet caramelized red onions made us happy.

What We Ate
Cozido à Portuguesa Croquette
Cuttlefish Croquette
Goat Cheese Croquette

It’s inevitable. Food travelers eventually crave familiar foods from home after traveling for a while. We had the same experience when we were nomadic for three years.

The following stalls serve global cuisine that’s popular around the world and probably in your hometown too:

Confraria

Japanese chefs create the best sushi in the world, which makes sense based on the Asian country’s passion for raw fish. Despite its 7,000-mile distance from Osaka, Cascais’ Confraria does a fine job with sushi using locally sourced fish. The popular sushi restaurant also has a Lisbon restaurant plus a stall at the Time Out Market.

Choosing what to order at Confraria’s stall can be a challenge for sushi fans like us. Tempted by the stall’s colorful, reasonably priced combo platter, we instead ordered two signature rolls – the Acevichado roll with tuna, avocado and a crunchy tempura center and the Confraria roll featuring raw and grilled salmon as well as Japanese mayo.

Mixing things up, we sampled the sushi stall’s tuna taco during our most recent visit to the upscale food market. The taco was a fun way to eat raw fish without any utensils required.

What We Ate
Acevichado Roll
Confraria Roll
Tuna Taco

Ground Burger gets our approval with its menu focused on ‘Oldschool American Burgers and Craft Beer’. The popular burger joint slings burgers every day of the week at the flagship São Sebastião location as well as at the Time Out Market.

We’re partial to Ground Burger’s cheeseburgers classically made with black Angus beef patties, cheddar cheese, pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard. When we’re extra-hungry, we order double cheeseburgers with grilled onions for double the yum.

What We Ate
Double Cheeseburger

After opening successful pizzerias in Lisbon’s Príncipe Real (2015) and Parque das Nações (2017) neighborhoods, Margarida and Rui Sanches opened their third Pizzeria ZeroZero location at the Time Out Market.

As the name suggests, Pizzeria ZeroZero makes its thin, crunchy pizza crust with a mixture of flours including double zero as well as moída à pedra and semolina. Pizzaiolos bake each pie in a wood-fired oven to achieve their desired level of crispiness.

With a more limited menu, the market location offers ten pizzas as well as desserts and drinks. We enjoyed our diavolo pie topped with huge (somewhat overgrown and slightly tough) basil leaves and spicy salami. Each pie is big enough to share, but you might want to eat one all by yourself. We won’t judge you either way since ZeroZero is one of the best pizzerias in Lisbon.

What We Ate
Diavolo Pizza

Travelers with a sweet tooth or two will not be disappointed by the sweet choices at the Time Out Market. Not only do many of the food stalls offer a sampling of Portuguese dessert options, but a handful of stalls exclusively sell desserts.

Discover our Portuguese dessert and pastry favorites.

Stop by the following stalls if you want to start or end your visit with dessert:

Crush Doughnuts

A favorite at Time Out Market Lisbon since 2021, Crush Doughnuts sells handmade American donuts that are big, bold and fun. They’re also more expensive than any donuts we’ve ever eaten in America. And we’ve eaten a lot of American donuts from sea to shining sea!

We first encountered these donuts on steroids at the original Ground Burger and were pleased to see them at Time Out. The stand offered 15 flavors, including red velvet, crème brûlée and pink summer, at the time of our most recent visit.

What We Ate
Pink Summer Donut

Gelato Davvero is the real deal. We’re not just saying this because davvero translates to really in English and realmente in Portuguese. We’re saying this because Davvero’s gelato is some of the best ice cream in Lisbon and favorably compares to scoops we’ve licked in Italian cities like Bologna, Naples, Rome, Venice and Verona.

Originally opened in 2013 around the corner from the Time Out Market, Gelato Davvero now has multiple locations, including one inside the market. The local gelateria chain sources many of its ingredients at the Mercado da Ribeira.

In other words, the strawberry gelato is just as fresh as it tastes. Really.

What We Ate
Medium Cup with 3 Scoops (Ricotta Walnut Honey, Strawberry & Pistachio)

Un P’tit Truc is high on our list at the Time Out Market since we love French pastries – especially pastries made with Valrhona chocolate, Iranian pistachios and Algarvian oranges.

Similar to the original Un P’tit Truc that debuted in Lisbon’s Saldanha neighborhood in 2024, this market stall sells a variety of filled choux pastries in flavors like salted caramel, lemon and raspberry. It also sells trompe l’oeil cakes inspired by Cédric Grolet’s fabulous fruit-shaped cakes sold in Paris.

What We Ate
Saint Honoré Éclair

Manteigaria bakes what many consider to be the best pastéis de nata in Lisbon. The über-popular pastelaria originally opened in Lisbon’s Bica neighborhood near Chiado in 2014 and later opened its second location at the market.

Read our Lisbon Pastel de Nata guide.

Don’t feel guilty if you start or end your Time Out Market experience with two natas instead of just one. Not only is each Portuguese egg tart inexpensive, but fresh ingredients include real butter instead of trans-fatty margarine.

Since manteigaria literally translates to buttery, we wouldn’t expect anything less.

What We Ate
Pastel de Nata

Time Out Market Lisbon has enough drinks to quench the inevitable thirst that comes from eating salty Portuguese food. Keeping to theme, the best kiosks serve Portuguese drinks.

These are our favorite kiosks in the market for liquid libations:

Beer Experience Super Bock

“The beer that goes beyond your expectations”

Super Bock, the most popular beer in Portugal, is super easy to find in Lisbon. Most bars sell the beloved lager by the keg, with locals typically ordering an Imperial (20 cl) for a euro or two.

Beer Experience Super Bock sells Super Bock Stout, 1927 Bavaria Weiss, 1927 Bengal Amber IPA and 1927 Munich Dunkel in addition to lager. Not sure what to order? The kiosk’s computer will help you pair your meal with a complementary beer.

This beer kiosk also allows customers to pull their own beer. It’s a full beer experience after all.

What We Drank
2 Imperial-Sized Super Bock Lagers

“Licor Beirão, the liqueur of Portugal”

Originally imbibed in Portugal’s Beira region in the 19th century for medicinal purposes, Licor Beirão, a sort of Portuguese amaro, is the most popular spirit in Portugal today. The liqueur’s distinctive flavor has an herbaceous quality due to a double distillation of seeds and herbs grown in Portugal and in former Portuguese colonies.

We were excited to see the kiosk at Time Out Market. We’d been wanting to try Beirão but weren’t sure how to drink it.

After sampling the basic sweet version plus the more refined complex Beirão d’Honra, we know what we need to do… buy a bottle of Beirão for cocktails and a bottle of Beirão d’Honra to sip. Any other decision would be wrong.

What We Drank
Beirão and Beirão d’Honra Samples – Free

The critic has spoken! Or, in this case, the critic has poured the wine!

As we discovered while ordering glasses of white wine to drink with our lunch, O Bar da Odete‘s owner ‘Odete Cascais’ is Time Out Lisboa‘s wine critic. She (assuming she’s actually a she) also has a wine bar in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto neighborhood near Praça dos Restauradores.

Just like the wine bar, Odete’s market kiosk exclusively serves Portuguese products. Red, white, rosé and bubbly – it’s all produced in Portugal. The same applies to ‘her’ Pata Negra Presunto (black Iberian ham) and cheese.

What We Drank
Glass of Vinho Verde
Glass of Alvarinho Blend

Taylor’s has been producing Port in Vila Nova de Gaia since 1692. Their kiosk at Time Out Market opened more than 300 years later.

Visitors who stop by this kiosk can sample a variety of Ports by the glass or as part of a curated Port tasting. Just like you can pick your Port, you can also pick your tasting.

Taylor’s offers five different tastings currently ranging in cost from €9.50 for basic non-aged ports, €28 for a duo of vintage ports and all the way up to €65 for a ‘century’ tasting of barrel-aged vintages. Prices are subject to change at any time. A range of ports varying in price, quality and age are available by the glass.

Not in the mood for a fine Port during the day? Try a cocktail instead. We’re partial to the Porto Tónico made with white Port and tonic water. This is one of our favorite cocktails to drink at home.

What We Drank
Nothing Yet But We’ll Be Back

A Vida Portuguesa has been selling Portuguese products since it opened its first shop in Lisbon’s Chiado neighborhood in 2007. Since these products include kitchen utensils and edible treats, the store is an ideal fit for this Lisbon food market.

Plan to stock up on souvenirs and gifts when you pop into this market stall. Tiny tins of conserved sardines travel particularly well, but other portable options run the gamut from piri piri sauce to bath soaps.

What We Bought
Ceramic Serving Bowl

Feeling overwhelmed with so many tasty choices? Let us make the tough decisions for you.

Bom apetite! Now go eat…

Time Out Market Lisbon is located at Av. 24 de Julho 49, 1200-479 Lisboa, Portugal.

🇵🇹 Lisbon Travel Checklist

Check out our guide to eating in Portugal as well as our picks for the best Portuguese foods and the best Portuguese desserts before your trip.

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