STET - Frame Colectivo | raum: residências artísticas online

From what I remember, before the 25th of April people came here to work, then this was a workers' neighborhood; they would bring their lunch boxes from home and eat at the taverns. They would sit here almost one on top of the other, with their lunch boxes and their small bottles of wine.

Then, after the 25th of April they constructed a canteen and the worker class disappeared. This was the time when the majority of the taverns began to close, they felt the decrease. This and the demand for charcoal and petrol also started to decrease.

It was my uncle that liked it. He loved birds. He even had a pigeon cote in Benfica, they would do pigeon races. The pigeon were all numbered, brought to Porto or the like and released there. There was a clock that counted. According to the arrival time the ring was placed at the clock. And they won 2nd place for Barcelona-Lisboa!

It’s thanks to the butcher that cuts the meat, a fundamental part of the secret is cutting this really thin, a well made cut, and n good quality meat. And then a little bit of lard , white wine, garlic and let it cook; I think that this is the secret. (...) It’s a kind of artisanal process.

Cooking, no. I have never been a cook. I had some experience of this kind. But I wouldn’t call myself a cook. The only thing that I do here is the bifana [pork steak] and pregos [beef sandwiches], simple things to do.

And that is why it is difficult as well, besides being Africans we are Muslims (...) My father insisted that we enter catechesis, to know what that was (...) we are the same but we have different theories of living.

Now at this age I am no longer saying that it is discrimination, I say that it is a person present in your area. (...) Little black girl! Little black boy! At the time, it hurt more to hear that because we didn't know what it was. It was new to us, we thought we were all the same but after all, there was something that was different. It started there, being the little black kids of the neighborhood, the little black kids of Mouraria.

This wouldn't be what it is if it were not a family group with all included. My brothers' wives, my mother, my father, my uncles, all the workers here, they are all part of a greater good.

At 5am I have to be here to have everything ready at 12 o ́clock. The lamb takes time, the bakra takes time to cook, the chicken isn’́t ready in 30 or 40 minutes; and then we have the coconut rice. And the chicken to grill, if you arrive here at 11 nothing would be ready.

Not even the coconut rice is ready in 30 minutes. We prepare it with dried coconut, I have to mix it with hot water, mash it to create the milk and then strain it.

(...) People that like to eat at home, like coming here. We don't have these single time clients (...) In the past the couples would have dinner out. Nowadays, only if they are very tired or they don't have anything to eat at home. And the majority lived in the outskirts.

The client that interests for our sector is the hotel client. This middle-aged couple that has some spending power and likes experimenting home-cooked food, traditional food from the country they are visiting and comes in for dinner. The rest I call them the modern snail, with the house on the back.

In a house where all kinds of people enter there is always a crazy order! This was one of them. (...) The boy comes to the kitchen and shouts ‘Steak without meat’ and I say ‘You want what?’ The other day they also asked me for an omelette without egg.

I cook rice pudding, chocolate mousse, condensed milk mousse, italian meringue; in the winter I cook flan, milk pudding.

— Clients don't eat much [fruit salad]?
— People think it's with spoiled fruit.
They think it's leftover and they don't eat. We used to do it before but it had little output; and, as everything, can’t be exposed long after made.

Even people of colour, I had groups of colour, impeccable people, everybody came here. They stopped. It was right after the change of the currency, right after. They were queueing when I had bean soup or meat stew...

So, the Bangladeshis, only if I could open my mouth... The other day I had a fight with one, I mistreated him and everything. He told me “I will give you 15.000€ and you will sell me the house”. “But do you think I don’́t know money? Get out of here” I told him. I sent him to hell... Kidding with me.. I know what 15.000€ are!

— And from the guest house do people come and eat?
— It is more prostitution. And I think they also rent the bathrooms for the guys to take drugs... Nobody is interested in that. Do you want a coffee?

I am the only cook, there's two that help me preparing, the salad and the onion, peeling potatoes, carrots... But the kitchen it's just me, no-one does anything, neither with desserts nor with anything else. I do everything: cakes, creams, creme brulée, chocolates, I create desserts.One of my cakes was already sent to Belgium, they already tried it there.

— What is the secret to [the team] work together?
— Some on the grill, the others already cooking on the stove. (...) Our team prepares everything ahead. We don’t do it on the same day. We prepare everything in advance. I already know what I’m going to do next Monday.

My wife is an excellent cook. I don’t know if she is the best, but for sure one of the city’s best.

When we have cabrito assado [roasted goatling], I post it on Facebook, and everything is sold before lunchtime.

Mr. Carlos Monjardino from Fundação Oriente [foundation], wrote a chronicle stating that among all Lisbon’s diners, good ones and bad ones, that only one leaves a smile on his face and it's this place.

(...) that area where the kitchen is now used to be the living area. And there is an area here that was the coal shop. That’s it. Overthere was the tavern, and inside there was an open space, the saguão [lightwell] of the building.

This wine is way better than the ones sold in those cardboard boxes. There’s no comparison.

No! He was here from 71 to 74, more or less. I was in the army... I usually say that my father, that spend about 3 years here, left his name carved in stone, and I, who have spend almost 60 years here, only have my name on tax agencies! [laughs]

(...) this door goes to the flat downstairs and to the one upstairs. And on the other side, there is another access to the flat upstairs. So, this house is not suitable for living. The rent of this place used to be 52 Euros. (...) Now an architect here restored it about 5 to 6 years ago and she is charging 1200 Euros rent.

The police station closed, that was next door to us. Overthere, closed another [company] that also had 20 workers; and here was always full of people. All of this just disappeared, this street is dead.

No, he was always a Benfica fan. I don't know if he still is, but when he was a kid, I got to know him when he was 8 or 9, he was obsessed with Benfica. Even as a professional he was playing in Benfica. Then, being a professional his relationship with futbol changed. Even the most dedicated fan, with the age you start to understand that it is not worth it to suffer that much.

— What other recipes or dishes are special in this place?
— Dishes is not with me, it is with my chef, she is the one that does the dishes.
— It is she who decides?
— Yes, in agreement with me, she has the ideas and then she just does them.

— And which is the snail recipe anyway?
— You have to wash them, put them on fire, and then salt, onion, garlic, chilli to taste

— Do you have long-term regulars?
— Some families are already in their third generation.

— (...) did you notice any difference in your clientele?
— In comparison to when I started, of course. At the time the atmosphere was horrible; it was a tavern, a lady would not enter this place in 1977. It was not easy, we worked hard. Today it is a modest place, but we have VIP clients.

— How many people work here currently?
— Three, here is all the team. My wife, me and my daughter. (...)
— It is a family business then!
— The principal member is my wife.

Usually it is still my mother that opens the tasca, although she is retired more than 5 years now (...) At 8 in the morning she is here, somebody comes in for a coffee, or somebody else comes to help with the peeling of the potatoes. In the meantime, the staff arrives and they start the day. SHe stays here until 10:00. At 10:00 she goes away.

My family has always been Benfiquista [Benfica club fans] and we have our place saved for 10, 11 years since they built this new stadium (...) Some say that this is the house of Benfica of Pedrouços [location]. We went with it, we had about 60 scarfs. Now I only buy scarfs of teams I don’t have.

We have a really good relationship with the workers at SIC (television channel). A lot of cameramen, pivots, journalists, come here. They say they like our dobrada [fish]. For example, there was one of our clients, as far as I know, he was the first, that wrote about the 25 best tascas in Lisbon's. And he was our client.

The street now looks good. They paved this road one year ago. I don’t remember them doing it since I was born. Well, it was paved before, but it was something like: a new pothole opens, they close it, then opens another, and they close it. It was a patchwork.

Actually, at the time (during the financial crisis) everybody seemed to be looking for affordable restaurants. Nowadays, I'm noticing that, especially from this summer and on, people starting thinking “the crisis is over, we don't need to be saving”; it seems that now that the crisis is over people feel more comfortable.

We have clientes that are almost friends, we miss them. Let me give you an example, a couple, the man is already retired, worked in the radio; they used to come here a lot. The woman had a health issue and they didn't come for some months. We had their number and so we called just to check on them. We end up becoming friends with our clients. Even if it is not the kind of friendship that you have home visits, we like to get the phone numbers, keep in touch.

We prepare the list for the following weeks and we see how it goes. Sometimes one makes a dish proposal, we experiment it and see how people react. For example today we had cachupa, a dish that has nothing to do with portuguese cuisine but we experimented and it resulted, so we are going to repeat it.

My father’s origins are from Alentejo, but he was born in Lisbon. My mother is from Seia, she came here really young, with all her brothers, the parents, and relatives, and they stayed in Bairro Padre Cruz until they got married and then they moved here.

This is a place full of musical instruments. (...) I bought various that were hanging there and people came by asking if they can test them and I was positive about it, and people started coming. They started entertaining themselves in the night, I didn't even like fado (...) And then I found myself with a huge crowd here inside, people singing to each other with my instruments.

(...) the portuguese used to go out for lunch, they didn't go to the supermarket to eat out of plastic. This started changing, it dropped, the migrants came. They don't eat out, I understand why, they who migrate want to earn money. So the lunches dropped. Now I turned to tourism, naturally, also because of the fado.

Back then, the taverns didn't even have a floor, it was directly the ground. Why? Because back then then taverns sold a lot of wine, they had a lot of wine, really a lot of wine and they needed to keep the space cool. The taverns didn't have a floor so that they can be cooler. This changed for hygienic reasons.

(...) In the past the workers would go to the tavern with their lunchboxes for the Galician to warm it. In exchange, they would sell a jug of wine which was ok for the business. (...) They started to make soup, potatoes, fried fish. It started as an offer, and the workers got used to it. They came to the conclusion that bringing a lunchbox or eating at the Galician has almost the same costs and was more comfortable.

(...) 60, 70 years ago there was a big group of friends playing. The one who lost used to put a coin in a can. At the end of the year with this money they would all go to an excursion. That was another strategy to always have regular clients.

The bar was also different, it was in artificial marmore and was curved like that one (he shows to a miniature of the former place) (...) It was a bar equal to Obelix!

In these last 10 years it all changed horribly for the worse. The municipality has a project to sell the whole building, because it is from the council. So they moved the people out that lived here. This is why I don ́t have any clients. If I didn't have the tourism, I don't have any portuguese clients, because all left to live outside Lisbon.

I only remember the tavern and the coal shop, I was about 6 when the gas started to replaced the coal. After that people didn’t buy coal anymore.

People have to gain consciousness about this: eating out as you see here, with knife and fork, a proper restaurant meal, is going to disappear. It has to become a well-paid job, as in other countries, otherwise this kind of family businesses have so many expenses, they will not be able to manage.

(...) A dish that my mother-in-law used to do and younger people don’t like is rancho (a pork and beef stew), another one is arroz de cabidela (rice with poultry or rabbit cooked in its own blood). The young generation doesn't appreciate this kind of food, it was more people of age that grew up eating these dishes and liked them.

At night, most people want grilled fish, they don't order pot-cooked food that makes you put on weight (laughs).

We are inside most of the day, but this is changing a lot. For example, there was a small shop, a tailor. He repaired everything that was coats, trousers, and the likes. It closed. Now it is only `monhés ́, indians, chinese; it all changed, all.

The menu is always the same. Today we have one dish, tomorrow another one, next week the same. It goes like this all year long (...) If you eat today and you come back in ten years, the dishes will be the same.

Nowadays, we could say that eating out exceeds leaving the domestic realm to celebrate specials moments and occasions (Fox, 1995) (...) In some occasions, there is a need to transfer the meal from the domestic (private) to the public space. Change in temporality – the issue of schedules –, becomes of major importance when discussing the consequences of capitalism.

Tascas might then function as a continuity [house] space (...) mainly because there is this figure of someone who is responsible for making the food, trying to protect and nourish the bodies that attend and share that very space.

It is this repetition [of the homemade recipes] that contributes to the creation of feelings of safety on both sides: repeating flavours creates a routine for customers who, by repeatedly attending that place, confirm their preferences.

(...) the “dish of the day culture” means that even when the offer exceeds one single specialty, the idea is still to have a limited offer, which emphasizes the character of what can be called “the house specialty”, and in turn might also be related to the very organization of the house meals (the “single dish” policy).

(...) it is both these dishes [of the day] and the existence of figures of reference that, combined with what is a set of common characteristics shared by these spaces, like a certain personalized aesthetics that, in its difference, ends up being transversal [in tascas] (...) and the applying of marketing strategies (even if they might be different, for example, the repetition or the non-repetition of the dishes, to play with the element of surprise, etc), will then enable an understanding that is hard to define from the semiotic point of view but that is immediately recognisable when we talk about tascas.

Trays with their cooking were delivered into the hands of two male waiters through two small windows in the shape of a half-moon. The kitchen and dining room were separated, marking the division between the place’s off- and on-stage: backstage and stage, work and leisure.

In Amaro, the only woman attending the tascas was the Bearded One. She was an alcoholic and it was common to see her passing by alone with her bottle, because her husband had died young. Her loneliness stirred the community’s condescendence towards a behavior they would otherwise repress and judge. “The Bearded One would go in only at certain times when the tavern was not filled with men and was respected by all: people were never rude to her”.

(...) the waitresses, remain long hours on their feet and it is of little importance the violence of the temperatures, vapors and smells reminiscent of the rooms where they imagine and produce their dishes. Alchemy is a labor of the hands and the flames, the stove burners, the heat from the oven and the control over the harmful elements of touch and sight are their affective domain.

The sexual division of labor overcomes the logics of social division of labor. If, often, the tasqueiro is the mediator between parked bodies (the customers), and passing bodies (the workers), as a rule women are sent to the kitchen, cleaning, and waitressing.

At tascas, women still cook under a non-specialized workers designation, and the condition of chef doesn’t fit into the service regimes. (...) “This doesn't work with a female chef really, there’s no chef. It works with a person who knows how to cook properly, who adapts and evolves as time goes by (...)”

From carvoarias (coal shops) to spaces of fascination for a new clientele eager for the authenticity of ancient Lisbon, tascas are today’s favorite places for the “modern snails”, which is in fact an ironic metaphor because not only does it transform the aristocrat tourist into a middle class tourist, it also classifies an intellectual and artistic petty bourgeoisie who lingers in these spaces.

Two men sit at a table in a tavern. They know that alcohol’s sacred ritual will free them in a moment. (...) They make a toast to lost hopes, and in each loss there is a feeling of victory. (...) “You will find that the purpose is that there is no purpose”, says one of them, already the philosopher, before proceeding: “But, yes, to go on and see what comes, to dream of dying at the table, eating, old, very old, surrounded by all of your friends, in a lunch of bread, cured ham, wine, lots of wine, olive oil and cheese.”

[Soliloquy]
I sit here every day of the week./ I read the sports newspaper from cover to cover./ I do the crossword puzzle./ Long life in ten letters./ This way, time goes by faster./ (...) This place has had its days numbered for years now./ They keep saying that it’s going to close./ Don’t do that to me, we will soon be gone./ Photography isn’t enough.

Many of those who saw him soon noticed an intriguing detail: Mr. F. cried while he ate. There wasn’t a pattern behind it. (...) Missing someone with whom he had shared the meal ritual (a love from his time working abroad), the sadness of loneliness (the aloofness of the only child) or the excessive amount of raw onion in the salad (a common feature of the lettuce one) were the most popular theories (...) Nevertheless, no one ever asked him about the phenomenon.

As space for sociability almost exclusively associated with the poor, the scope of the diverse world of the tavern grew, together with its imaginary. For the Police General Intendancy of Lisbon (from 1760 onwards), the taverns – shops for drinks, bars, pubs, wine storages… – were placed right after streets and squares.

The popular tavern now lost, between barrels, smell of wine, dark rooms, and dirty balconies, visited by soldiers, blue-collar workers, bohemians, and others with little money, the nostalgia of the tavern has stayed, now remembered in sanitized environments, houses with tapas or snacks, or merely in the names of the eateries.

Before the aestheticization of the kitchen and the wine, and after the sickening modern dishes of industrial food in series, served in sanitized and well-lit spaces, the food of the poor didn’t use to attract much appreciation: pork rinds, codfish cakes, liver in onion stew, pilchards, snails, (...) those were things from the tavern, all well-watered with some mugs of wine – red, preferably.

[In the taverns] There were also fried birdies. Yes, thrushes, sparrows, greenfinches, quails, pigeons, and generally all that could fly and would fall for the traps or the gunshots. (...) In almost all the menus of all the taverns, the fried birdies were a constant. Birds! (...) Birdies! Fried! Poor them. (...) Birds were the terror of the vegetable gardens, the cereal farms, the cornfields.

Today, the processes of aesthetic apprehension of the tasca are changing – we don’t see it in the same way – and, therefore, the tasca is foreign and local to itself, forming a strange-familiar relationship.

There will be a future generation for whom the tasca will serve as a ‘historical’ medium – especially since this is the category that ensures the survival of the city’s identity, such as in the aforementioned ‘historical stores’.

The rampant proliferation of generic or gourmet tascas engulfs the ‘original’ tasca. This way the face/trace of a memory of vicinity is lost and the tasca is transformed, in our apprehension, in a kind of familiar that we never got to known, but that rings a bell.

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