46 SAVEUR.COM
H
igh up one of Lisbon’s interlock-
ing hills in the neighborhood of
Mouraria, where many of the
city’s immigrants reside and the
homes lean perilously into one
another, I’m eating cracked crab
on the jammed cobblestone patio of Cantinho do Aziz.
It swims in a delicately scented coconut broth sea-
soned with piri-piri, a bright red chile common among
Portugal’s Mozambican community. All around me,
diners sit at tables festooned with brightly colored
African cloth. Twinkle lights zigzag overhead.
Khalid Aziz’s father opened the restaurant
33 years ago, when the family first arrived from
Mozambique, a country that, until its independence
in 1975, had been occupied by Portugal for over four
centuries. His father’s patrons were almost exclu-
sively other Mozambican emigrants. Aziz, who
shares his father’s name, took over three years ago
after working in London as an interpreter. One of
the first changes the junior Aziz made was to remove
bitoque from the menu, a classic Portuguese steak-
and-eggs dish that his father had served as a gesture
to the native friends his Mozambican customers
would occasionally bring in.
Aziz wasn’t sure if the young, smartphone-
wielding, born-and-bred Portuguese clientele
began to come in before or after he and his wife,
Jeny, scrubbed the remaining local dishes from theClockwise from top left:
Boi Cavalo, Hugo Brito’s
restaurant in Alfama;
crispy fritters with
coconut chutney (see
recipe on pg. 50);
the hilly streets of Mou-
raria; chef Brito; outside
Leopold Restaurant.menu. But they came and packed the place—and the
accolades followed.
“Something’s changed in the last few years,” he
told me as I took a bite of a chamuça, a crispy fried
sachet of coarsely ground beef seasoned with curry
and fresh herbs.
“Young people like the food, so they bring their par-
ents—they want to take them to a place that’s trendy.
The parents come in and say ‘I took you here when
you were a kid.’ ‘No, no!’ say the kids. ‘It’s new!’ ”A
s a general rule, Portugal has launched its
people into the world rather than taken
wanderers in; in the 18th and 19th cen-
turies, the only immigration to speak of
came from Spain and Galicia. But when the dicta-
torship dissolved in 1974, a first wave of migrants
arrived from its former colonies in Africa and India;
and when Portugal joined the EU in 1986, Brazilians,
Chinese, Indians, and Eastern Europeans joined the
ranks of new job-seeking residents. And in the last
few years, as the country has made its way back from
the 2008 economic crisis, an exuberant, creative
food scene has f lourished in Lisbon. Though many
restaurants still proudly serve a predictable, famil-
iar Portuguese menu—cod-and-potato-based dishes,
hearty paella-esque rices, and meat-and-bean stews
like feijoada—native chefs are starting to open up to