I thought I’d report back on a surprising discovery, surprising to us because we did not intend on it nor did we read about it anywhere else.
Husband and I are primarily vegetarians with occasional fish when at home/in the States, but when we travel to international places, we don’t make it an intention to limit to vegetarian food and rather just enjoy the local cuisine. We spent 5 days in Lisbon and 3 days in Porto. It wasn’t until our stay in Porto did we happen upon a dedicated vegetarian (vegan, actually!) eatery right in the mercado that is along the riverfront where many of the wine cellars are. The place is called Daterra in what is essentially a food court called, I think, Mercado Beirario (URL: mercadobeirario.pt ). Food was really inexpensive for US standards. 10.50 Euros for all-you-ca-eat lunch or 12.50 Euros for dinner buffet. For some reason, this place was cash only.
However, their other location in Porto accepts credit card; same price. Apparently they also have locations in Lisbon although we did not chance upon them.
The food is all vegan, mostly room temperature/cold dishes with some hot ones. And it’s not just boring salad greens. There’s also soup that’s included. There’s also desert but that’s not included in the price of the buffet. All very, very yummy and boy, is it affordable. Food (in eateries/restaurants) in general, for US standards, is just really quite affordable and almost ½ the cost of what we usually pay.
That said, it’s easy to eat a lot of meat and fish in Lisbon and Porto, and a little harder (for casual tourists) to find veggies or at least substantial veggies so we were glad to have found Daterra ( https://www.daterra.pt/ ). We ate there twice and the roughage really helped our, erm, “systems” to flow ;-)