Balcão

• São Sebastião (Linha Vermelha/Azul)
• €€€
• The Gourmet Experience, El Corte Inglês

The Lisbon branch of the Spanish department store brand, El Corte Inglês is a consumer mecca of the city. Adored by locals and tourists alike, it draws people in doing the family food shopping, those looking for luxury bags and jewelry and teenagers wasting time at the cinema. With seven floors above ground and a few subterranean, if you're not sure where you might be able to get something in Lisbon, here's a decent place to start. In offering so many reasons for people to arrive at the store, it also supplies the Gourmet Experience on the top floor. A multitude of food choices for shoppers to refuel, along with a high end delicatessen and alcohols shop, all with cracking views across Lisbon.

One of the themes of The Gourmet Experience is to show off some of Portugal's Michelin star owning chefs, one of which is Henrique Sá Pessoa, chef of the critically acclaimed, two-star rated, Alma in Baixa-Chiado in the centre of Lisbon. Wanting to honour the traditional Portuguese tavern, he has set up Balcão in the Gourmet Experience to offer just that.

A simple menu of Portuguese classics, we found ourselves settling in after a trip to the cinema one Sunday afternoon. Being a shopping centre, the restaurants are well equipped for providing your meals in double quick time, giving the option to order swiftly to get in and out, or order a bottle of something and settle in if you wish.

It is worth saying that we are just about cynical enough to know that any eatery in a commercial centre with a celebrity chef name over the door is more likely marketing that a clinical example of the chef's cooking, but when it comes to food there really is such a thing as bad press.

Well if Balcão is in any way an indicator of what chef Pessoa is offering at Alma, we'll be making our way there very soon. A couple of bite-sized leitão croquettes to start served up crisp breaded roast hog with a lush sweet and hot mustard, an oinkingly good start to traditional Portuguese food.

Bacalhau à brás can be a minefield in Portugal, so beloved are they of their salt cod, that it's about as close as you can get to treason for ever criticising it, but we have had some rotters since we moved here. At Balcão however, hulking chunks of cod flakes muscled into delicately sliced potato and onion, sat lightly in its egg mix with the fresh egg yolk investigating every crevice of the terrine to great success. Salty, fishy, eggy, but none-too-much of any of it. Similarly a monsterous prawn caesar salad with slices of parmesan large enough to sail a ship with was delightfully crispy and light as it should be.

We are systematically working our way around the eateries of El Corte Inglês for the joy of the research. It's not likely they'll be places we return to time after time. But whether its here, Time Out Market, or Alma, you can trust the offerings of Henrique Sá Pessoa.

Drinks: Two glasses of Portuguese wine, a bottle of water and coffees

Don’t forget to order: Learn about how a national treasure should be done with the Bacalhau à brás