Despite being one of the liveliest of Lisbon’s neighborhoods, Alvalade doesn’t appear in most city guides. Maybe because of the location, north of downtown and next to the airport, with planes taking off and landing being part of the usual sights and sounds. Maybe because it is mainly a residential area, with few – if any – hotels available nearby. Maybe because it is seen as a strictly local neighborhood, with no museums, elevated viewpoints or places to listen to fado. But despite all that, it has a lot to offer, especially to those who want to eat, shop or simply roam the streets with the locals. Let’s focus on that first verb: to eat. In Alvalade, there are still plenty of places that offer traditional Portuguese food at traditional Portuguese prices: less than 15 euro per meal. Some of the neighborhood’s best tascas have been recently renovated, with a slight increase on the bill – nothing too hefty – but keeping the same old-style cuisine and the daily dishes that have been attracting a faithful clientele for the last few decades.

As women in pink polo shirts conveyed steaming tureens, pungent earthenware crocks and freshly-baked sweet loaves, it was clear that the Azores’ celebration of the heavenly spirit had a strong component of earthy sustenance. We were at a função (function), a communal meal built around bread, wine and traditional meat dishes that forms a central part of the archipelago’s unique Holy Ghost festivities, which take place in villages around the islands over the 50 days after Easter. “This is one of the island’s most deeply respected traditions and it’s taken very seriously,” explains José Álamo Meneses, mayor of Angra do Heroísmo, a jaw-droppingly beautiful UNESCO World Heritage city on the island of Terceira. “Only around 10 percent here go to mass regularly, but they fill the churches on the day of the Holy Spirit,” he adds, before joining 250 fellow citizens for lunch in a hall hung with patchwork blankets in the hillside neighborhood of Bicas de Cabo Verde.

We spotted this colorful display of conservas (canned fish) at one of Lisbon’s finest traditional markets. The tinned fish industry is an old one in Portugal, dating back to the 19th century. The quality of the fish and the olive oil, plus the retro packaging makes it a delicious souvenir or gift.

The up-and-coming, terroir-obsessed wine distributor Os Goliardos is reached through a tiny alley that opens into a courtyard behind an apartment block in Campolide, a residential Lisbon neighborhood just north of the Amoreiras shopping mall. The company keeps a low profile, hiding Lisbon’s greatest wine storeroom in a narrow garage that counts several auto body shops as its neighbors. Since they keep odd hours, we were told to find a mechanic named Senhor Rui who would let us in with his key to pick up our order. We looked for him in a dark garage, where a man sat, listening to fado on the radio, beside a distressed Fiat. Wrong mechanic. Suddenly a large, smiling man in work clothes appeared in the yard jangling a set of keys.

[wptab name='Story']Up on the walls of O Frade’s polished interior is an old radio that catches the eyes of most clients. The music wafting from it is part of an illusion: “We hid the wireless speakers we use inside it because the radio doesn’t work anymore,”' says chef Carlos Afonso, who runs this small new restaurant alongside his cousin, Sérgio Frade. The radio came from their grandmother’s house and is there to remind them of the very long afternoons the two cousins spent around the dining room table, eating with their families. “That’s where we first learned to appreciate food,” Carlos recalls. Food has always been a serious subject for both. O Frade’s namesake is an old taberna that was run by Sérgio’s family members in their hometown of Beja during the ’60s. Back then, tabernas were a big part of the way of life in the Alentejo region, serving as meeting points where men gathered after work, to eat (a little), drink (a lot) and (when the mood was right) to sing the famous Cante Alentejano, polyphonic form of singing that UNESCO designated as an Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2014.

Walk through Lisbon’s Madragoa, a neighborhood of cobblestoned streets and small houses, and you are likely to be hit with the intoxicating smell of freshly roasted coffee. Follow the scent and you are likely to find yourself in an utterly unique spot: Flor da Selva, one of the last wood-fired coffee roasters in Europe. Manuel Alves Monteiro, from Melgaço in northern Portugal, founded Flor da Selva in 1950, and Manuel’s son, Jorge, and grandson, Francisco are keeping the family business alive and kicking via an artisanal method – one they started using many years before anything artisanal was trendy, mind you. “My father was a coffee lover,” says Jorge, thinking back to when Manuel first opened his shop. “At this time, we were drinking a lot of mixtures with barley or chicory that were inexpensive, but he could see the potential for 100% coffee blends.”

We like to be comforted with a hearty stew after a long day, so we visited Senhor Palma's to see what is stewing today. It was pea and chouriço stew - ervilhas com chouriço - so of course we stayed to have some.

Order a plate of vindaloo in one of the many Goan restaurants around Lisbon and your local friend at the table may point out that the origin of this dish is, in fact, Portuguese. Even the name can be decoded back to the Portuguese vinho d’alhos (wine and garlic), he’ll say. But let’s be honest here, amigo, vinho d’alhos has about as much to do with Goan vindaloo as the croissant does with the cronut. Vinho d’alhos may have sailed off to Goa along with Vasco da Gama in the 15th century, but when it returned to Lisbon with Goan migrants in the 1960s and 70s, something had changed. It had gone Goan.

Over the course of June, Lisbon’s neighborhoods are perfumed with the smoke of barbecued sardines. It’s one of the most prominent features of the traditional arraiais, the festivals that pop in each neighborhood at this time of year, offering grilled fish and pork, beer and sangria, and music. While all this eating, drinking and making merry is certainly a fun time, it’s by no means the main event. For many Lisboetas the highlight of the June festivals, which are held in honor of Santo António, Lisbon’s favorite local saint, are the marchas (parades) on the night of June 12, the eve of Saint Anthony’s Day. It’s the moment they have been waiting and preparing for all year.

Next to some wooden shelves overloaded with spirits, a photograph of Natália Correia hangs on the wall. The photo’s placement makes it appear as if Correia, cigarette in hand, is surveying the small room, which is crowded with semi-broken tables. The late poet and upstart co-founded this tiny bar/café a few decades ago, and her presence is still felt here and in the neighborhood more generally: A nearby street, with a spectacular view of the city, is also named after her. Botequím is one of Graça’s oldest bars, located on the ground floor of Vila Sousa, one of the worker apartment complexes built at the end of the 19th century.

On our Song of the Sea culinary walk in Lisbon, we witness Brazilian Arabica coffee beans being roasted while we get into the history and significance of coffee in the culture and cuisine of Lisbon.

It’s 5:20 in the morning and while most lisboetas are still sleeping, Lurdes and Ermelinda Neves are already arriving at the Mercado da Ribeira in the Cais do Sodré neighborhood. Cooks and chefs from Lisbon’s restaurants start showing up at this central market at 6 a.m., and these two seafood sellers need to prep their stall for the day. On this April day, there are clams, both from Setúbal and the prized ones from Ria Formosa, in the Algarve; sea snails; the beloved percebes (gooseneck barnacles); mussels and canilhas (a kind of small and spiky whelk) from Peniche; and cockles and shrimp of different origins – although the best seafood usually comes from the southern shore, the western coastline also yields some excellent specimens.

Traditionally the Portuguese consume large amounts of sugar and cakes all year long, with the most famous being the pastel de nata, Lisbon’s iconic and delicious custard tart – no visit to the city would be complete without trying one. Luckily for you, it’s one of many sweets that we sample on our Culinary Crossroads walk.

José Saudade e Silva always knew, deep down, that he wasn’t cut out for tedious office life. So one day in 2014, after studying marketing and working a 9-to-5 job in that same field, he bought a one-way ticket to Oslo, where he had some friends. He didn’t exactly know how he would make a living there, but one of those friends quickly got him a job working in the kitchen of a new fine-dining restaurant, even though José didn’t have any sort of professional cooking background. His only experience in the kitchen was being around his father, an excellent cook. “My father instilled in me a love for food from a young age. He does a great bacalhau à Brás [salt cod with potatoes and eggs], among other dishes,” says the 27-year-old.

On our “Song of the Sea” walk in Lisbon, we visit some of the city’s best cervejaria, no-frills seafood and beer halls, where we find prized shrimp from the northern coast, the best cod cakes, percebes (the goose barnacles that are harvested from the rocky coast of Portugal) and delicious local clams.