Sol e Pesca

Portugal's relationship with tinned fish is not a hipster affectation — conservas are a serious national industry with genuinely excellent products, and Sol e Pesca is the easiest place in Lisbon to understand why. The room is a former fishing-tackle shop on Rua Nova do Carvalho and they barely changed it: rods on the walls, floats in cases, and a menu that is essentially a list of tins.

You order a tin, and it comes with bread, butter and whatever pickles are going. That is the format. The range runs from ordinary sardines through to octopus, eel, mackerel in escabeche and things you will have to ask about. The good ones — well-sourced fish, decent olive oil, some age on the tin — are genuinely delicious and completely unlike the supermarket version. Ask what they are proud of that week.

Drink beer or vinho verde, sit at one of the small tables, and treat it as a stop rather than a destination. It works particularly well early in the evening before the street outside turns into the Pink Street circus, or late at night when you need something salty.

Honest notes: it is a tin of fish and some bread, and if that does not sound like a meal to you, it will not become one. Prices for the better tins add up faster than you expect. And the location on Rua Nova do Carvalho means the noise level after eleven is entirely outside anyone's control. Go for the concept, the room and one or two very good tins.