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In Portuguese, it’s now known as Efeito Time Out, the “Time Out effect.” An iconic fresh market – for example, Lisbon’s Mercado da Ribeira – is renovated and rebranded, given a new life, albeit one that has little to do with the traditional Portuguese market. In 2014, the Time Out media brand took over control of more than half of Lisbon’s central market, renaming it Time Out Market Lisbon, and essentially turning it into a food hall, one that is largely frequented by tourists. On the market’s opposite side, the neat rows of produce, fish and meat vendors remain, but just barely.

It would be easy to heap blame on the Time Out group, but the truth is, across Lisbon, fresh markets are dying.

“People are looking for sales, they’re not concerned with quality,” says Teresa, a fishmonger with 27 years of experience, when we ask her why the people of Lisbon tend to opt for supermarkets over fresh markets. Her workplace, Mercado de Benfica, just might be the exception to the rule. Although it’s seen changes in its 50 years (and it stands to see some significant tweaks in the near future –  more on that below), Benfica Market is a relative rarity in Lisbon: a vibrant fresh market where people actually shop.

Under an iconic dome in the eponymous district located northwest of Lisbon’s city center, tens of vendors sell produce, fish, meat, dried goods and other items.

“Everyone shops for fish here – families, chefs,” says Hugo, a fishmonger in the market. Benfica Market’s interior takes the form of rings of market stalls, with the three innermost circles dedicated to seafood. If the people of Lisbon know Benfica Market for one thing, it’s undoubtedly fish.

“Sometimes we have 20, 25 types of fish,” Hugo tells us. As we speak, a passerby squints at a pile of tuna bones and Hugo tells him that they can be used to make cachupa, a bean stew with roots in the former Portuguese colony of Cabo Verde.

Like Hugo, many vendors at the market have roots in this archipelago of 10 islands off the western coast of Africa. These days, Benfica is an immigrant neighborhood, and the market, where Portuguese ingredients such as turnip tops are sold alongside plantains, reflects this.

At Afro-Mix, a shop on the market’s outermost ring, a vendor named Emanuel sells a selection of dry goods with links to former Portuguese colonies.

“We mostly sell things from Africa, with a smaller selection of things from Brazil,” he tells us, giving us a crash course in the different types of palm oil, and explaining the various grinds of cornmeal and how and where they’re used. Afro-Mix also sells dried spices, which means you’re likely to smell the shop before you see it.

For something more domestic, we pop into Fumeiro do Lamego, a small space loaded with smoked sausages and other meat products from Lamego, a town in the north, as well as meats and cheeses from other parts of Portugal. A handful of similar deli-like stalls occupy the outer rings of the market, offering cured meats and cheeses from across the country.

Indeed, there seems to be a distinct emphasis on protein at Benfica Market, and we counted eight butcher shops occupying the outermost ring. At these you’ll find slightly more obscure meats such as goat, as well as offal and other less common cuts. The outermost rings of the market are also home to fruit and vegetable vendors, many displaying flags from Cabo Verde, and selling the type of exotic produce one might not expect to see in a suburban market. These are interspersed with bakeries selling everything from massive, lumpy loaves from Portugal’s interior to more delicate baked sweets.

Together, these vendors offer a portrait of a world that’s largely disappeared in Lisbon as most shoppers head to supermarkets, a world that could very well change at Benfica Market as well. In 2021, in a contest held by the Municipality of Lisbon, the architecture firm Oitoo won the rights to renovate Benfica Market. In an interview in the online newspaper Mensagem de Lisboa, Nuno Rodrigues, one of the architects overseeing the project, said, “Of the current physical structure, we’re only going to preserve the skeleton.” Rodrigues goes on to describe a Benfica Market that will have more appeal to younger shoppers, and one with a greater role as a community hub. Among other changes, the firm has proposed replacing the stone market stalls with those made from metal, moving the fishmongers from the center of the market, installing a skylight, and expanding the market’s exterior areas via a shaded peristyle. The firm’s mockups for the market can be seen here.

Although work was set to kick off this year, to date, the renovation has yet to begin, and the vendors we spoke with seemed to know little to nothing about the planned changes. “Is the renovation going to happen?” replies a butcher, laughing, when we asked what he knew about the plans.

Bruno, a dried goods vendor, tells us, “I heard that they’re going to install some restaurants upstairs.” He adds that although he thinks a renovation is “necessary,” he does fear that it could lead the market to losing some of its charm and atmosphere.

“It’s obvious that the market needs to be renovated,” says Ana, a cheese vendor at the market for more than 10 years, “But it depends on how it’s done.”

In general, the vendors we spoke with seemed cautiously optimistic about the market’s impending renovation. And given Benfica’s distance from central Lisbon, a true “Efeito Time Out” is unlikely. But for a glimpse of a classic Lisbon market the way it used to be, it’s probably a wise idea to make the trip to Benfica sooner rather than later.

Austin BushAustin Bush

Published on November 18, 2022

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