In the neighborhood of Lumiar, so far away from downtown and other tourist attractions I doubt few…read morenon-locals will ever visit, we found this local bakery after visiting a friend. I figure the raving reviews by locals should mean something, and thankfully, I was right!!
I won't call this a small bakery, as inside it is rather big with many tables. We wandered in, admiring all the pastries and bread they have, and I am sure looked very much out of place. To our delighted surprise, the owner came up to us and asked in excellent and polite English how she can be of assistance.
She told us their specialty is pão da avó (which is in fact recommended by one reviewer) so we ordered that, plus a few other items to try. My husband loves pão da avó (which translates to grandma's bread) and he declares this to be excellent, much better than all the other places we've tried so far, including the much-scorned-by-locals A Padaria Portuguesa (even the uber drivers tell us to avoid that!) The owner told us that unlike the chain who uses frozen dough, here they make everything fresh, from scratch, starting at 3 in the morning. Some of the bread we got were still warm.
For me I was delighted that they have ovos moles, a specialty from Aveiro much further north, the chestnut eggs, and the chocolate salami, to satisfy my sweet tooth. Needless to say, like any pastelaria in town, they offer the pasteis de nata. The owner even offered us one to try!
The bread is ridiculously inexpensive, €2-3 for one kilo! We ended up getting a bunch of this and that, to fill up any luggage space we may have. Surprise again, the owner has some beautifully printed hexagonal tubes for us to put the egg tarts in, so they can survive the trip home!
And oh, they are open on Sundays too!
