Please, ring the bell — so gently requests the golden metal plaque beside the entrance of the building with green doors and red awnings at number 212 on Rua de São Bento. For forty years, this has been the elegant and welcoming destination of power, where the hunger and thirst of those who steer the country’s course are satisfied — fittingly, just across the street from the Assembly of the Republic.
Founded in 1982, Café de São Bento reaches maturity with a youthful spirit. For this forty-year-old Lisboan, it’s not a midlife crisis but the result of a managerial lifting: a new administration that, since February, has set itself the goal of marrying renewal and tradition.
The traditional restaurant features among the “101 Top Restaurants of Lisbon”, a selection by Immigrant Foodie.
Another achievement for the establishment, now under the management of Lisbon native Miguel Garcia — himself also in his forties — who brings with him years of experience in the hotel sector as operations director for the Tivoli Hotels group and the iconic Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro. In all of them, he devoted special attention to the restaurant side of the business.
It is now Miguel who welcomes the regulars, the members of parliament, the prime minister, and the president of the Republic. Regardless of their titles, they all follow the invitation of the golden plaque and ring the bell on the green door, seeking a moment of peace — and the pleasures of the table.
Their appetite is satisfied by the star of the menu, the Bife à Café de São Bento, served religiously since the very first day the restaurant opened. Since last December, it has been accompanied by a red wine bearing the restaurant’s own name on the label — a special blend produced to celebrate its forty years.
Apart from that and a few other small novelties, Café de São Bento remains faithful, with monastic rigor, to its traditions — the most important of which is the vow of silence observed by the waiters, witnesses to the secrets whispered among the powerful, who, between the clinking of cutlery, weave the political destinies of Portugal.
The Secret Room and the president’s oranges
For 19 years serving politicians at Café de São Bento, Manuel knows well the value of an ear trained not to listen — an essential skill in a restaurant like his.At 60, he’s lost count of how many times he’s learned, firsthand, the news that would later appear in the next day’s political reports.
“There I am, watching the evening news on TV, and I think to myself: hey, I’ve heard that here before,” he says, smiling beneath his glasses and trademark bow tie. “But we never comment on anything,” he repeats.
Getting the day’s hot news served on a silver platter isn’t a privilege reserved only for the staff. Manuel says many journalists are frequent visitors too — one eye on their plate and the other on the next table. “Politicians and journalists, you know how it is,” he smiles. “They’re like bread and butter.”
For those looking to escape the journalists’ keen ears, there’s a small private dining room at the back of the restaurant, adorned with a curious wallpaper that mimics an old library and a beautiful painting by Júlio Pomar, centered above a single table. “We call it the secret room,” Manuel explains.
He says it’s the favorite spot for guests seeking more privacy — usually politicians accompanied by their advisors, extending their cabinet meetings from the Assembly of the Republic to this quieter annex. True to the restaurant’s code of ethics, however, no names are ever revealed.
All this know-how is now being passed on to the restaurant’s youngest face, Bruno, already skilled in the art of balancing trays and arranging silverware, plates, and glasses with precision. His is also the first face seen by anyone who rings the bell beside the green door.
A bell that has been pressed by many presidents and prime ministers. “The only one I never served was Professor Cavaco — he never came here,” Manuel admits, allowing himself a rare indiscretion.
If Cavaco Silva never had the pleasure of tasting the restaurant’s famous steak, the same cannot be said of Mário Soares. “He’d walk in and sit right there, where you’re sitting,” Manuel says, pointing to table one, right by the entrance.
“The sôtor was always in a hurry — he’d barely sit down and already wanted the steak on the table, saying, ‘forgive me, that’s just how I am.’”
Manuel smiles at the memory. “And what could I do but reply, ‘It’s on the way, sôtor, it’s on the way…’”
Faithful to his favorite dish, Mário Soares used his presidential privilege for just one indulgence — a dessert not listed on the menu. “The moment he finished eating, still in a rush, he’d peel himself an orange,” Manuel recalls, the image of the apologetic former president flashing in his mind: ‘forgive me, that’s just how I am…’
Curiously, in his 19 years working so close to power, privy to firsthand information and even a certain intimacy with it, Manuel has never once crossed the street to visit the Assembly of the Republic.
The art of small changes
At Café de São Bento, it’s just the opposite — if Manuel doesn’t go to the Assembly, the Assembly comes to Manuel.
Miguel Garcia knows the value of his staff’s experience — and, above all, their priceless discretion. The new owner of Café de São Bento makes a point of meeting regularly with the team to hear their opinions on the menu, the restaurant’s daily operations, and even possible changes to its physical layout.
“The challenge,” he says, “is to change only what truly needs changing.”
The results of these meetings can already be felt in the small details — like the background music. Gone is the pop-rock; in its place plays a smooth jazz set, taken straight from Miguel’s own Spotify playlist.
Some other changes, however, were less discreet — particularly on the menu. Among them, what once might have been considered a heresy: the introduction of a vegetarian dish.
The Mediterranean Tart (curiously translated into English as Vegetables Wellington) now appears alongside the iconic Bife à Café de São Bento. To balance things out, meat lovers have gained two additional options besides the house’s flagship steak: Bife à Portuguesa and Grilled Steak.
Miguel says he came up with some of these new ideas while sitting at a table here — still as a customer. “I always thought, for instance, that there should be more choice among the meats,” he recalls.
So, when he took over, the restaurant’s famous steak gained a new large portion (250 grams), served alongside the regular 200-gram version.
To celebrate the restaurant’s 40th anniversary, Miguel introduced two novelties. The first is already available: the Café de São Bento Red Wine, a special blend of 3,600 bottles (now one fewer, after this lunch), produced by Monte da Ravasqueira Winery — crafted specifically to pair with the restaurant’s beloved steaks.
The second is a gift for the restaurant’s 40 most loyal customers: a gleaming steak knife engraved with the restaurant’s distinguished name. The list, Miguel assures, is already complete — but, following the house’s tradition of discretion, he keeps it secret. It’s known only that among the names is that of a journalist.
Of course, a restaurant fit for “Your Excellencies” isn’t exactly priced for the average voter — the signature steak dish hovers around €27. To maintain a politically democratic tone, an executive lunch menu was introduced, offering starter, main course, and dessert for €25.
None of these changes touched the restaurant’s signature dessert — the legendary slice of chocolate cake, served since the days when the menu consisted only of steak and that very slice. The only difference now is that, to satisfy distinguished palates, the treat proudly bears the name “The Best Chocolate Cake in the World.”
Looking ahead to 2023, Miguel plans to give the décor a makeover — though, as he clarifies, “not to make it more modern.”
“The idea is to return to something closer to the original style, the way it was when the restaurant first opened,” he continues. In less than a year under new management, these and other subtle changes have, by Miguel’s count, increased turnover by 60%.
In less than a year under new management, these and other subtle changes have, by Miguel’s count, increased turnover by 60%.
Encouraged by the success, he’s now considering reopening a Cascais branch, which would join the existing one at Time Out Market. A third, in downtown Porto, is also in the works — though that one, he admits, will take a little longer.
“After all,” he smiles, “no one knows better than I do that to move forward, sometimes you have to wear the diplomatic shoes of a politician.”
The man of a million steaks
Speaking of politicians, one of the latest to return to Café de São Bento was President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Pleased with his meal, Professor Marcelo made a point of going up to the kitchen to greet the man responsible for the steak he had just enjoyed.
It was there that another Manuel — Manuel Fernandes — earned the right to his first “Marselfie.”
“Professor Marcelo is a person just like anyone else. In fact, all the presidents I’ve met have been ordinary people,” says Manuel Fernandes, who invokes professional secrecy when asked to show the photo with the president on his phone.
A namesake of his colleague downstairs, Fernandes, now 65, has been in the restaurant’s kitchen for no less than 37 years. He is not only the longest-serving employee but also the guardian of the standard behind what has come to be known as “the best steak in Lisbon.”
A title that, according to him, holds no mystery. “The secret is the meat. If the beef is first-rate, there’s not much else to do,” he says modestly — the same modesty that has followed him since the early days, when he grilled the first steaks in a tiny kitchen at the back of the restaurant, equipped with nothing more than a rudimentary camping stove.
Nearly four decades later, the kitchen now occupies an entire floor of its own. It’s there that Manuel Fernandes receives around one ton of veal sirloin every month. The quantity is so large that Portugal’s herds can’t keep up — the meat also comes from Germany, Belgium, Poland, and Spain.
The quality of the meat is crucial, but the sauce is what truly makes the difference — a sauce with a story, and an Italian one at that. It traces its roots back to Antonio Marrare, a Neapolitan who came to Lisbon in the early nineteenth century to work as a butler for the Marquis of Nisa.
The former butler soon opened his own establishment — Café Marrare, in 1820 — first in Largo de São Carlos and later on the old Rua do Chiado (today Rua Garrett). It was there that he served the first steaks with the sauce he created and named after himself. The recipe for Molho à Marrare, Manuel Fernandes assures, is still the same two centuries later.
Over all his years in the kitchen, Manuel has long since lost count of the number of steaks he has prepared. Still, if he cooks at least a hundred of them every day, a rough calculation suggests that in 37 years he’s grilled well over one million steaks.
One million — enough proof that, for the past forty years, Café de São Bento has been one of the main establishments responsible for, quite literally, “feeding” Portugal’s political debate.
O jornalismo que a Mensagem de Lisboa faz une comunidades,
conta histórias que ninguém conta e muda vidas.
Dantes pagava-se com publicidade,
mas isso agora é terreno das grandes plataformas.
Se gosta do que fazemos e acha que é importante,
se quer fazer parte desta comunidade cada vez maior,
apoie-nos com a sua contribuição: