lisbon
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In a city lined with beautiful streets, Lisbon’s Travessa da Tapada is easy to miss. Lines of parked cars and apartment buildings connect busy thoroughfares within a short distance, and the roar of traffic from the nearby A2 elevated motorway echoes.
Still, every day a steady parade of tourists, many of whom have traveled thousands of miles from China, make their way toward the unmarked address, 5A.
Antonio Silva, 66, works alone behind a green door with no sign at his small Portuguese restaurant, Churrasqueira. This churrasqueira is a no-frills charcoal grill best known for its roasted chicken. Inside, he tends a bed of glowing embers and spins spatchcock birds in the heat while the phone rings for orders. The smoke drifts towards the glass and stays there, lingering like a memory in the storefront window.
On a recent winter’s day, visitors lined up outside an empty storefront, wearing quilted coats with fur hoods and holding cellphones, ready to take photos and videos for social media. They were there to photograph the scene, Silva’s hands, the grill, the chickens, etc. through a fogged window, and to taste what was still steaming in the cold in a white paper bag with a cartoon rooster printed on it.
The taste of the chicken is first smoky, with a hint of charcoal in the skin, then the saltiness and the gentle sweetness of the seasoning, and the meat is surprisingly juicy under the crackling. The tangy flavor is punctuated by a bright residual heat that seems to accumulate rather than burn.
Travessa da Tapada has not always been a tourist destination. Mr. Silva has been roasting meat in this backstreet shop for decades, and until recently it was a secret known mostly to locals in Lisbon’s Alcantara district. There are no street signs, just the door number “5A,” and the daily rhythm hasn’t changed much since we started.
And somehow the address ended up on the Chinese “must go” list and the line started.
Silva said it started about two years ago. He could not remember exact dates, only “before” and “after.” The first Chinese customer came. See you the next day. Then, and then another, he noticed that the store’s clientele had almost completely changed.
“That’s when I first realized it,” he says. The line slowly grew, and at some point it stopped being a line and became a wave. “Sometimes there are 40 Chinese people at the door. I saw 40 people. Believe me if you want to believe it.”
One day, he says, a man came in with a video camera and spent hours filming the inside and outside of the store from every angle. “He was there for a long time,” Silva said, looking around the store and recalling his visit. “Maybe a Chinese influencer. I don’t know.” Soon after, this little alley became a dot on the international map.
“It’s word of mouth from millions of people,” he says.
These days, travelers often arrive directly from the airport with suitcases. Some people come from the hotel and the concierge will guide them over the phone. Once inside, many people use translation apps, often telling Silva what they already know. “You are very famous in China.”
If Silva is impressed by the reputation, he doesn’t show it. He himself is not on social media. “No Facebook, no Instagram. I don’t have anything,” he says. Again, no orders are placed on the delivery platform. Requests come in by phone, often using the store’s ancient black rotary-dial handset.
The line for Silva’s chicken stretches down the street, but his premises are small, with narrow hallways lined with beige tiles and shelves stocked with wine and soda bottles, jars of pickles and olives, and bags of potatoes. Boxes are stacked in every corner. There are crosses, old calendars, Portuguese flags and clocks on the walls.
Silva’s day starts a few hours before most tourists show up. Shortly after 9 a.m., he walks from his nearby home and answers the door of a supplier delivering food. Then comes the part that never appears in social media posts. It’s about scrubbing away yesterday’s oil.
“It’s too hot to clean at night,” he explains. “You can’t clean the grill or the glass at night. And it’s pitch black at night and you can’t see anything anymore. And I’m tired, very tired.”
He cleans the filters, replaces them, and installs new ones just like he would keep an engine running all the time. In between, he cuts the chicken, seasones it, wipes his hands, answers the phone, and repeats the greasy process. “This is a battle,” he says.
A little before noon, the grills wake up and so do the neighborhood’s appetites. “I start grilling the chicken at 11:30,” he says. “They’ve already taken me there by 11:30.” Next, Chinese tourists arrive.
These days, Silva is ready. Next to the cash register, he keeps a folded piece of paper with numbers and pronunciation notes to help him count in Mandarin. “Yee, el, sun, shi, woo,” he chants – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There are also some useful words that can be read aloud. “cao ji” (free range chicken). “xiexie”, thank you. “Ra”, spicy.
His rudimentary linguistics always moves the line and pleases those who have traveled halfway around the world to see him in action. Smiles spread outside as Silva called out the order number in Mandarin. For a moment, they are no longer just tourists in a famous place. They are the ones who feel recognized.
For Portuguese customers, there is one concession to modern technology. It’s MB WAY, a local mobile payment app. For tourists, cash is the only option, often in the form of 200 euro banknotes delivered directly from the airport. If Silva can’t change, the line usually accommodates.
He considered adding other payment methods, but says his accountant advised against it. He insists his customers aren’t haters.
“The secret is really in the way you treat people,” he says. That means adhering to strict orders. Patrons come first, and those who order first will be served immediately, even if the door is full of tourists with cell phones held aloft.
“If you order, come here. It might be full of Chinese people. We’ll give it to you right away. They’ll be waiting.” And they do — an excited group, faces pressed against the glass, laughing and filming. “We had about 12 girls yesterday,” Silva said. “I counted it myself.”
Ingredients are also important. “Fresh chicken. Fresh chicken every day. No leftovers,” he says.
That commitment could come at a cost to him. Silva recalls a time when a customer pre-ordered chicken for a certain time, so he would cook it and set it aside, but the customer never came to pick it up or pay for it. Silva absorbed the loss, and by the end of the day he could no longer carry the chicken over to the next day.
Later, after we had sold out the rest of the chicken for the day, another customer asked if we had any chicken left. Silva instead handed over the unclaimed chicken and waved the money away.
It’s a small detail in a crowded store, but it’s easy to miss on a video on a cell phone screen. But this helps explain why people keep coming back, and why the line outside the Green Door is constantly replenished.
Next is the seasoning. It’s a recipe he perfected many years ago, but it hasn’t been published.
“Once I made this seasoning, it was over. I never touched it again,” he says. “It’s been the same since 1979, ’80.” Time is also a factor. He prepares the chicken well in advance, letting the flavors infuse before it wakes up on the grill. “The advantage is that you get flavor from one day to the next,” he says. “Lunch items are always seasoned longer.”
We also use piri piri, a Portuguese chili sauce. Although it is not homemade, we have relied on the same contractor for 40 years.
“Grandpa” grilling chicken
As Silva works, smoldering charcoal settles in the grill with a dry hiss, and the smoke shifts momentarily, as if the shop is taking a deep breath. The chicken is lying on the heat, its skin crackling. Fat drips and sends smoke. He puts down the tongs, picks up a small saucepot, and brushes the skin until it’s shiny. More charcoal followed, pushed into place, fanned to life, and the flesh spun again.
At 5:30 p.m., Silva looks outside as if reading the street. “Around 6 o’clock, they start arriving,” he says. By 6pm, the line is pressed against the window. The interior of the store is lit from within, and the smoke on the glass acts as a filter. The camera on my phone is rolling, capturing an already familiar scene on my hometown screen.
Most Chinese tourists come because of posts on RedNote, a TikTok-style Chinese social media platform that many travelers use as a guide.
Some recent couples call themselves Tony and Elena. They know little about Silva’s Churrasqueira other than its location and the need to bring cash. Despite having the budget for Michelin-level dining, they say they prefer to travel around authentic, local cuisine. “We don’t care if it’s high-end or poor-quality. As long as the food is good, it’s great,” they say.
Another visitor, Mr. Wang, lives in Barcelona and is vacationing in Lisbon with his wife and three daughters. This is his second visit to Travessa da Tapada, following the first recommendation from RedNote. He liked it so much that he came back.
“I’ve tried this chicken before and it worked well,” he says. He added that it’s not just about grilling the meat, but also about “the way it’s seasoned and the flavor that lingers at the end.” There is also a sense of familiarity. “There are seasonings that feel familiar to us.”
Vince and Alice, a Chinese couple living in the United States, were also brought here by Red Note. “For example, if you search for ‘grilled chicken,'” Vince says, pointing to an app on his phone. “This will appear at the top.”
Reviews have been uniformly positive and, as Alice points out, include an AI-generated synopsis that explains the venue’s features and the “grandpa” who grills chicken in-store.
Li Mei from Shanghai is visiting on her second day in Lisbon. She said she didn’t come because of RedNote, but because of a colleague’s recommendation. “Go, bring the cash, wait a little, and eat at the door,” the colleague told her. She was sold.
When Li returns to Shanghai, he will pass on the same advice. “There’s a little place in Lisbon that has grilled chicken, so I have to go.”
This recommendation passes from hand to hand, like a white bag with a rooster imprint, still warm and still smoking.
Silva continues to run in the center. Despite our best efforts to serve everyone who comes to our door, sometimes we run out of chickens. Sundays can sell out early, especially if you haven’t had a delivery, and you’ll have to scour your local supermarket to keep chicken on the grill.
But grills don’t burn forever. Silva has other plans. “I plan to retire in May,” he says. His two sons don’t want to take over the store. One lives abroad and plays in an orchestra. Another runs his own business in Portugal.
When Silva finally extinguishes the embers, the scent of grilling chicken halfway around the world may also go with it.
