Coppola

• Rato (Linha Amarela)
• €€/€€€
• Praça das Flores 56, 1200-250

If you're one of the few mad internet users who have looked at more than one blog on this silly hobby project of ours, you'll be accustomed to our opening preamble of nonsequitur to set things up. Well, to break from tradition and indulge a short history of ours we'll start this one by saying Coppola is our favourite pizza place in Lisbon.

This time round we shared a meatball starter. Juicy and tender meatballs swimming in tomato sauce so rich it could be called Arnault marinara. Exposing all the fresh garlic and basil folded within it, with bread directing you on the path towards the impending pizza bases coming next, to soak it up with. For our pizza we put away a truffle and mushroom, baked to perfection with the truffle refining the earthy flavour of the mushroom. For the other we took on the Delfina. A preposterous plate of gluttony as pistachio pesto wrestles to support the creamy decadence of fior de latte and spicy aromatics of glistening mortadella. All floating on a base which lives in that exact midpoint between crispy and chewy.

The food here is exceptional, and if that's all you wanted to know you can basically stop reading here, maybe scroll through the pictures if you're feeling curious.

So why is this restaurant so special to us? Simply put, it was a visit to here back in 2021, with the Covid-19 pandemic still coughing and wheezing its way around the world, that we realised that Lisbon was definitely a place we could move to to build the next chapter of our life.

Given the obvious problems posed by global travel during that time, and the fact we also lived in a country with very strict travel restrictions in and out, that particular trip to Lisbon was so much more than a holiday. It was a full-blown sliding doors moment.

With only a small amount of online research to guide us, we found ourselves staying in an AirBnb on the gorgeous Praça das Flores. And by pure chance Coppola was our neighbour. At the time our city of residence had plenty of 7/10 pizza places in it, but nothing that truly slapped in the way that leaves you looking forward to the cold leftovers for breakfast. Coming out of our enforced lockdown world and into Coppola was having the light shined on what really great pizza is again. Along with the inimitable Black Sheep wine bar next door to it, we found ourselves living the very version of life that we wanted once some sort of normality came back to being. And so now we do.

So there you have it. We can't be truly objective about this restaurant, it carries far too much emotional heft for us. But then isn't that the point of enjoying dining out. It's not just the food, but the stories we can associate with it. For us Coppola is love. Love of place and love of life. Try it for yourself, whenever we come back to Praça das Flores, it's clear the tidal wave of international visitors coming to Lisbon also consider it a dream place to get away.

Drinks: 3 glasses of wine and bottle of still water.

Don’t forget to order: Get the Delfina if you're feeling dirty.