Being (sort of) vegan in Portugal
My relationship with food? It's complicated. (63)
For a variety of reasons, I’ve been doing a bit of a dance with food recently.
There was a stretch of time in the late aughts where I was lactose intolerant. It was controllable if I took a lactase tablet at the start of a meal that I knew contained dairy. After we moved to St. Louis, things settled down a bit. I could eat ice cream on occasion. I could use butter in baking and on toast or pancakes and put goat cheese on a salad. If I ate hamburgers rather than cheeseburgers and stuck to non-dairy milks, all was generally well. So well, in fact, that I didn’t even bother to put lactase tablets in any of the six duffel bags or four carry-ons we reduced our lives down to before moving overseas.
For many years, I’d understood that eating red meat was both not great for my own health, and bad for the future of humanity on this planet. I lacked the will and the knowledge to change my eating habits, however, until I watched a TED Talk about being a weekday vegetarian. In fall 2019, I jumped on board.
When we moved to Portugal, I figured that with all the amazing seafood we were going to find here, it would be a shame to only be able to eat it two days a week. In summer 2022, I became a weekday pescatarian.
Then the lactose intolerance flared back up again. This was worse than it had ever been. Two lactase tablets kept symptoms at bay. Sometimes. And sometimes not. I just recently (as in, like, two days ago) learned from the first two minutes of this video (by some guy I’ve never heard of but he has 2.23 million subscribers on YouTube so he must be an expert on something … right?) that lactose intolerance can be intermittent in some people. Perhaps I am one of them.
So where does this leave me? I guess I am an intermittently lactose intolerant weekday pescatarian. Who doesn’t know how to eat the fish that’s served here. (Seriously, I need lessons. Not kidding. Even a little. Help. Please.)
I had a routine colonoscopy in late December and used that as an opportunity to reset the G-I tract. I’ve been hyper vigilant about dairy since then in hopes that things will (Somehow? Eventually?) settle back down to St. Louis levels of tolerance. It’d be nice not to have to retreat at the sight of a buffet table.
So where does this really leave me?
Circling the wagons around a small group of known “safe” foods,
scrutinizing ingredient lists (they do a much better job of identifying potential allergens in Europe than they do in the US), and
looking for vegan-friendly restaurants.
Fortunately, there is an abundance of the latter in Lisbon. And, thanks, to an app/website my actual, honest-to-goodness vegan-by-choice friend Mike introduced me to1 called Happy Cow, I am able to locate, explore, and review them. I get points for doing so, in fact. I posted my first review a few weeks ago and I’m in the Gold Award tier now. Just 127 points away from Crystal (the level not a person), which will allow me to gift the app to a friend. (Anyone interested? Let me know.) Three cheers for gamification!
Here are a few places I’ve found (keeping in mind that I am very early in my explorations):
This is an entirely vegan burger joint. With four locations in Lisbon (including both the Amoreiras and Colombo malls), there’s frequently one not far away. It’s reassuring to know that I can eat anything on the menu without having to worry about short-term consequences. (Is it the healthiest food to eat every day? Eh, probably not.) One thing they do very well there, in my opinion, is cheese. Many of their burgers feature goat or Swiss or other types of cheese and these substitutes taste like they are supposed to. (Apparently, getting good vegan cheese can be hard? Like I said, I’m new at this.) Their patties are not Beyond or Impossible brand - the two big name “meat substitute” companies - but either a bean/mushroom/chickpea/beet combo or a breaded seitan. They have pretty good fries and their Oreo milkshake is just the thing for my sweet tooth. Menus are available in Portuguese and English and they are tolerant of my attempts to order in the former. Good comfort food with a little bit of attitude.
Verdict: I don’t want to eat there every day but I’m glad they’re an option. And, I’m not gonna lie, I did go once just for a milkshake.
This little restaurant in Braga is exactly what I visualize when I think about puttering about town and stopping somewhere for a nice lunch/snack. They’re in one of the many tiny shopping … plazas? centers? malls? hallways? … buried inside a building - you kind of have to know they’re there as there’s no visibility from the sidewalk. If they weren’t on Happy Cow I would never have found them. I had a piece of their bolo rei com chocolate as king cake is a Christmas specialty in Portugal and I felt as though I’d been missing out since the ones at grocery stores are made with milk. It was so, so good. I didn’t see English menus; the server was tolerant of my limited Portuguese and didn’t switch to English as so many people automatically do, which I appreciated even if it did make communicating a little more awkward - it helps me learn. I wish I’d taken pictures but I left a 5-star review on Happy Cow (my first review on the platform, actually) and they responded, adorably: “We appreciate your kind words and look forward to welcoming you again. We are a little box full of surprises.”
Verdict: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️love, love, love this place.
Similar to Vegan Details in that it’s tucked away in a (different) tiny mall in downtown Braga. They have a sandwich board out on the sidewalk, though, so they’re slightly easier to find. It’s vegan, gluten free, and - from my (admittedly limited) experience - delicious! While not a terribly large space, they apparently do workshops on occasion, which is quite interesting. (Their website is currently advertising one on flavoring kombucha “to surprise guests or visitors.”) Amy and I stumbled in on a chilly January afternoon so I ordered a hot chocolate and an alfajor, an Argentinian treat I’d not heard of but sounded amazing when described.
It tasted as good as it looks. While there, I was unable to access their guest wi-fi for some reason so a man sitting at a table who the woman behind the counter deferred to when I had trouble gave me access to the employee network.
Verdict: Another place I would love to get better acquainted with - if we move to Braga, it could be dangerous :-D.
Cinnamon Indiano - Saldanha (back in Lisbon)
Many Indian/Nepali restaurants have extensive vegetarian options. Cinnamon is able to take any of their 17 vegetarian entrees and make them without dairy. Maybe any place can do this? I’ve not seen others as accommodating on their menu (which is in both Portuguese and English).
On the surface, it seems like this wouldn’t taste as good but the results were fantastic.
I ordered the veg masala off of their prato do dia. It was my first time ordering a plate of the day in Portugal. These are often pretty good deals and this was no exception.
The server - who probably spoke better Portuguese than English though neither appeared to be her native language - steered me to the dairy-free bread option and they substituted that for the naan.
The flavors were rich and complex. Amy spoke very highly of her vegetable biryani as well. This is easily one of the best Indian restaurants we’ve eaten at anywhere in the world (not that we’re globetrotters, mind you, but we have had great Indian in Manhattan, Connecticut, and St. Louis at least).
Verdict: Very glad to have found this place. Absolutely will go back. We may get to try their locations in Cais do Sodre and Penha de França as well at some point.
While there are others I could mention here, I fear I have already droned on too long. I would ask those of you who’ve fallen asleep to see yourselves out when you wake up. And try not to make too much noise so others may continue to rest.
If it wasn’t crystal clear from above, I’m new to the vegan scene. If anyone has any suggestions for me, please comment or drop me a line. If you’re interested in hearing more about area restaurants (vegan or otherwise), please also let us know.
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Scott (& Amy)
Thanks, Mike!
Having lived with food intolerances since 2014, I'll have to say one of the things I've found most helpful when eating out, in the states or abroad, is a little card in my wallet, listing the foods I can't eat (and when going to countries that don't speak English, I have them translated to the appropriate language). When I travel abroad I typically bring a slew of them, and tell the waitstaff that they can bring it to the kitchen/chef if they need to (to make sure nothing gets lost in translation). Butter doesn't have lactose in it, and typically hard cheeses are pretty low lactose. I wonder if you're becoming dairy intolerant as in you're reacting to the proteins now? I know that some people can become lactose intolerant after stomach bugs for longer than one would think. I also found that in Europe, menus were better marked, and that people were MUCH more accommodating of food issues than here in the US. I found fantastic gluten/dairy free pizza in Scotland that was so good, I wanted Izzy to smuggle some of the cheese home with her. Here in the US we have Violife and Daiya which aren't bad (coconut milk based). I haven't tried any of the nut "cheeses" because, well, I can't have nuts. Good luck on your quest!
I've been vegan for 12 years and have traveled to Germany, France, South Korea, Singapore, Dubai, Bali, Barbados, Costa Rica, Bermuda, and Mexico during that time (whoa! did not think the list was going to be that long). My general experience is that there are more all-vegan places than omni places with vegan options, and I kind of wish it were the reverse. It would be nice to get to go everywhere. I've never posted a review on Happy Cow, so you're already ahead of me in vegan points! I don't find HC to be very helpful - it's clunky and I do better just googling and looking at the restaurant's website. Indian is definitely the way to go, and most of the time when they make it vegan all they're doing is using a different oil instead of ghee, so the taste is going to be exactly the same. Please post more about your vegan adventures! I love going to the supermarket in other countries - what interesting vegan stuff do they have there that we don't have in the US?