Pastéis de Belém

One of the best things about Portugal: these Portuguese tarts.
And the best place to get them in Lisbon is definitely Pastéis de Belém.

Located a 25 minute crammed bus ride away from downtown Lisbon at Cais do Sodré, is this glorious bakery. There will always be a line up, and you will not understand until try one of their tarts. But don't be fooled! The line is only if you want to take something to-go.

You can choose from all their pastries...

(I couldn't really take that many pictures since it was soo crowded.)

...or walk through and find a table to sit down and eat.

The sitting area is a lot bigger than what you would expect. We walked by the kitchens and the tarts making area. Oh myyyyy.

We ended up sitting in a small room next to this baking area.



And then our food came :D

If you can't tell, I am super excited to eat (lol I look so exhausted and tired - also true though).

S ordered this sandwhich with ham, cheese, tomato and lettuce. She had a serious craving for veggies (you will understand this if you read my other posts from this trip). She said that the bread was actually flakey so it had a croissant texture to it which she loved!

I ordered a duck pâté puff pastry. It looked massive, but there was only a bit of the pâté spread at the bottom. It doesn't look that appealing, but it was soo good. My puff pastry was delicious, and the duck pâté was super flavourful.

I also ordered a salt cod cake, because apparently these little things are Portuguese delicacies. It was very interesting, but I think I waited too long to eat it. It was good but it would have definitely tasted a lot better warm.

And then the main dish of the afternoon...

These little beauties.

I'll be honest. I was skeptic about these. I've been told numerous times how good they are and how it's so much better than the ones we have here in Toronto, but I didn't really believe them. I thought they'd taste like the ones I could buy from the Chinese bakeries at home. To everyone I doubted, I apologize. They are actually so much better! The crust is flake-y and croissant-y, which I absolutely loved. The tart melted in my mouth and I was so sad that I was full - I wanted more!

So. Friggen. Good.

Do not miss the chance to visit Pastéis de Belém if you are ever in Lisbon. Trust me, the time spent getting here and waiting in line is so worth it.

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For the rest of my Iberian Peninsula posts, click here.

Mi-Ne Sushi

I have never taken a panorma picture for food before, but here is my first one!

The sushi rolls here at Mi-Ne are so large that it wouldn't fit in a normal picture.

Decided to come here after work because I didn't know Japantown closed on Mondays! So sad. The only thing I heard about this restaurant is that it is expensive. I fully understand why now. Their sushi rolls are MASSIVE.

I wish I had something to compare it to but it would be comparable to the size of a fist. So awesome!

We started off with some green tea and this sushi platter. We ordered a small size, and opted for all salmon (luckily all four of us were salmon lovers).

It came with 18 nigiri rolls, 3 spicy salmon rolls, 3 california rolls, and a tempura roll.

We also ordered the Boston Roll, which had spicy salmon, cucumber, crab meat, tobiko & avocado inside.

And the Orangeville (a crowd favourite, and also the first roll out of the 30 that popped out to me). This one was a spicy scallop roll, wrapped with fresh salmon, tobiko & avocado.

Here are the insides of the two rolls. Top is Orangeville and the bottom is the Boston.

Each roll came with 9 massive pieces.

I was super full after all this food, and it didn't even seem much for four people! The only thing was that they did not serve you green tea ice cream, like usual Japanese restaurants. It left me with a green tea ice cream void that I needed to fill. Other than that, the service was good and the food is definitely worth the price :)

0109 Dessert & Chocolate

It's dessert time!!!

I have a thing for sweets, especially when it comes to 12 scoops of gelato and chocolate fondue.

As per usual, I found out about this place through the excessive amount of pictures I saw on my newsfeed of this delicious looking gelato chocolate fondue. 0109 Dessert & Chocolate is located in Scarborough. It's a little far away, but I think it was worth the drive.

We came on a Saturday night and it was pretty crowded. Lucky for us, we were able to score a table after 15 minutes of waiting. A lot of people were sitting and playing board games, which is why the wait is probably so long usually.

Without any hesitation, we ordered the Gelato Fondue.

Served with 12 various flavours of gelato, four macarons, an assortment of fruit, chopped roasted almonds and chocolate fondue.

So much excitement!!

We were given these baby forks to get a bit of gelato to dip in the chocolate. You just wait 15 seconds for the chocolate to harden, and viola!

It actually tasted as good as it looks. I am usually a loyal ice cream flavour kinda gal. I have a couple favorites and that's it. However, I tried all 12 of the flavours and liked most of them (which is surprising). I would definitely order this again.

We also got a Sweet Crepe with a Nutella filling topped with strawberries and bananas.

The crepe was also really good. We ate it with some of the leftover gelato.

Last up, we ordered the Nutella Marshmallow Toast - which looked like a s'mores cake.

It was also pretty good. I personally thought that it was too much toast, as I am not a big fan of bread or 'doughy' things. Between the thick toast, there was another layer of Nutella. I liked the warm marshmallows though!

Overall, I really enjoyed my night here. The desserts were good, and the food did not take long to come out. It is a little far for me to visit more often (and I really shouldn't for the sake of summer being here), but I now have a new to-go place in Scarbough for dessert!