They knew exactly, who is who and what’s good & what’s bad of public catering.

Due to circumstances noted above, I guess, it’s simply & easy to go to some little cafe or restaurants were many locals eating their meals. But to get something of food without standing in line so problematic. If you decide to eat something, you must to stand a line short or long- it depends of popularity of food. But a lot of kinds of authentic Portuguese meal were presented. It’s uncomfortable, especially for people with some health issues. A lack of ventilation lead to the lack of fresh air, too high indoor temperature as well. First of all, overcrowded huge covered pavilion with three parallel passes about 100 meters long, IMHO, not typical Portuguese cosiness restaurant. Time Out Market New York is sandwiched (mmm, sandwiches) between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges with the best waterfront restaurants and. We’ve visited it following to a lot of admiring reviews: authentic Portuguese cousin & wines, atmosphere etc. They definitely need to address this issue as it isn’t fair for people going to eat to have to hover and wait for so long. It’s nice to have a little walk around in the day/evening and if you can get food there I would recommend it, but the wait for a table was just absolutely ridiculous and we left feeling rather frustrated at having to wait and then rush. You go to the individual vendors to order, they then give you a buzzer which will alert you when your food is ready. You also can’t take your food to go because everything is served on proper ceramic plates, I’d have happily had a takeaway bag if it was offered. My partner couldn’t be bothered to wait for food in the end so we went elsewhere. The food we had was good, I went to Castro’s and had the cod fried balls with tomato rice for €9 which was excellent value! But we left pretty soon after eating because we felt guilty about hogging a table. Sadly, they don’t offer outside seating which is a real shame and many of the people there stayed chatting and drinking after they had eaten so were in no hurry to leave. It’s not a very nice thing to have to do and it felt a little awkward but there was no other way to be seated. We found the trick is to hover/stand by a table and genuinely just wait until someone leaves. It wasn’t necessarily the queue for food but the wait for somewhere to sit! We must have waited for at least 45 minutes before we found a place to sit. We came one evening for our dinner and were really looking forward to it, especially hoping to try food from multiple vendors but it was just ridiculous. The new Mercado da Ribeira, revitalized by Time Out Lisboa, has about 30 restaurants. The Time Out Market is insanely busy! And I don’t believe there is a ‘quieter’ time to visit. It is the first editorial project in the world in three dimensions.

Time out market lisbon bars