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This is truly a hidden gem of a tour. Most of free tours are simple walking sightseeing tours, but this one includes eating a progressive dinner at 5 different restaurants/bars. A typical food tour is about 100 euros per person. This trip works out to be half the price including the tip paid to the guide, so it’s a great value. The tour description was a little vague on how exactly it works, so here is the explanation: Eduardo picked out the places and what dishes to order at each place ahead of time. He may adjust the # of dishes by the # of ppl. (The limit is minimum 2 ppl maximum 10 per tour. We had 3 groups = 7 ppl at this tour, a good number that enabled us to order all the dishes Eduardo had picked out originally, and allowed easy conversations between groups.) At each place, he gave them a headsup before we arrived, so the table was set up waiting for us. Eduardo didn’t eat, so he spent the time talking about each dish and how it related to Portuguese history. We shared all the dishes family style, so it’s important that your fellow guests should be polite and respectful in terms of sharing the food, especially if some people liked certain dishes more than others. After we finished at each place, he got the total bill and evenly divided it among the guests. He arranged with the restaurant to accept separate payments, so we paid the restaurant ourselves by credit card or cash. At the very end, obviously we gave him a tip. He clearly did a lot work above and beyond the normal guide for a walking tour, so we gave him twice the tip we normally would for a walking tour. A typical walking tour is basically a mobile lecture, entirely dependent on the guide’s knowledge and ability to speak English (or whatever language the tour is supposed to be), but this tour is more like a blind date + dinner party, so it’s also important what kind of other guests are on the tour. To be honest, Eduardo’s English was not the best (I would give it a 6~7 on a scale of 10), so if this is purely a walking tour listening to him talking, it might be only 3 or 4 stars, but with the food and his weaving the food experience with the history, and the fact we really enjoyed our conversation with the other 2 groups, it made the tour experience the best we have had of all the free walking tours we have had. The only thing I wish were different would be an earlier time slot. He only does it at 7:30 and we did not finish until close to 11 and I was so full that I had trouble going to sleep. If it is possible to do it at lunch time, that would have been even better.
Eduardo was a great guide! Very knowledgeable and gave good recommendations and context for Portugal with its history!
Eduardo was an amazing tour guide. He is very knowledgeable of the history of Portugal and its relevance to food. The restaurants and food were presented through a theme and each theme was greatly represented by the food. Even though the restaurants changes depending on the week, our favourite was the Mozambique piri piri chicken. We recommend this to anyone who loves food and history.
Great tour! We went to a bunch of places and it was the perfect way to start our trip in Lisbon!
Perfect
