Ministerium Cantina, Lisbon.

By day Ministerium is a busy restaurant on Libon’s main square, Praça do Comércio, whilst by night it turns into a nightclub. We visited during the day…twice…on a 24-hour trip to Lisbon. So that alone tells you just how good the food and cocktails were at this place. It isn’t often I go somewhere more than once when I’m travelling as I love experiencing as many different restaurants as possible, but this place was so good that on the Sunday we had two lunches just so we could come back to Ministerium

We’d arrived in Lisbon around 1pm on the Saturday, and were starving hungry as our flight had been delayed. When we walked through the Rua Augusta Arch and rain started pouring down on us, we ran as fast as we could to the nearest cafe we could find…that cafe turned out to be Ministerium. There was a stag party being a typical stag party – loud and drunk – so it looked like a fun place to sit under the umbrellas and shelter from the rain.
We sat down and as soon as we saw the menu, we knew we’d hit the jackpot. The cocktails were just 8 Euros, and the food sounded delicious and like everything in Lisbon was well priced. Also I really liked the design of the menus, and let’s face it, that’s everything. Haha!
We decided to go all out as it was ‘tapas’ style, so we ordered a few dishes…they had to bring over an extra table for it all and the waiter exclaimed ‘This is all for you!?’ ‘Erm, yes.’ It really wasn’t that much to be fair…


Salted Cod balls….

Mackerel on toast…

I honestly can’t for the life of me remember what these were…they tasted fantastic though, as did everything!

And Octopus with salad and potatoes…
We were very full after this. We sat there for a couple of hours just eating and drinking delicious cocktails. We discussed men for about 90% of the time (standard), and then the other 10% we just discussed travel, work, and the food we’d eaten and all that usual jazz. We also spent much of the time doubled over the table from laughing so much, I blame the drinks and Catherine #2 being her usual hilarious self. 


The next day we were back again. We’d had a light lunch at Ramiro, and decided we needed to save dessert for Ministerium as they looked so good but we just hadn’t had room the day before. We started with dessert (which was quite small and a little disappointing actually), then we decided we wanted some of the amazing fries, and then we wanted dessert again so had some custard tarts. We also tested out some more of the cocktails. My fave was the yummy pina colada in a milk bottle, and the ‘ABSOLUT Pineapple’! 



If you’re in Lisbon make sure you go to Ministerium! I was really worried about going somewhere on the main square in case it was too touristy, but it was cool and contemporary and we really bloody loved it. Plus, it was fab for people watching!

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Ministerium Cantina Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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Catherine Lux
Catherine Lux

Catherine Lux is a veteran travel blogger by night and the Head of SEO at Havas Media Group by day. Originally from Surrey, she spent four years living in Australia (2007-2009, and 2016-2018), and now lives in London. An ex-party girl sometimes prone to relapses, she loves nothing more than sharing her fine dining and luxury travel experiences with her loyal readers.

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5 Comments

  1. Angie SilverSpoon
    April 12, 2016 / 9:29 am

    Oooh mackerel on toast sounds amazing!

  2. Andrea Petersen
    April 12, 2016 / 2:08 pm

    YUMMMM love tapas and obvs bookmarking this place!! Where are pics of dessert though?! 😉 Lots of love, Andrea xxx

    Andrea's Passions

  3. Catherine Lux
    April 12, 2016 / 2:10 pm

    Dammit you noticed 😉 Well. Basically. At Ramiro we had a bottle of wine and got really drunk…so then when we went back to Ministerium for dessert, I photographed the cocktails, then drank the cocktails, then I was too drunk from the wine and cocktails to take photos of the desserts and fries 😛 oops. Haha!

    C x

  4. Unknown
    April 12, 2016 / 9:35 pm

    Twice in 24 hours is all the recommendation I'll ever need…

  5. Suze @LuxuryColumnist
    April 13, 2016 / 9:19 pm

    Looks like you didn't order enough tapas 😉 Same thing happened to us in Andalucia

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