Tasquinha do Oliveira

Tasquinha do Oliveira is the kind of restaurant Évora visitors hear about from friends and then book before they board the train. The room holds twenty-two seats across a single dining room, the walls are hung with copper pans and oil-painting reproductions, and there is no printed menu. What arrives is whatever the chef-owner Manuela made that morning.

The format begins with a continuous flood of starters — olives, regional cheeses, presunto, fava beans, sausages, sopas — that take up most of the table before any main course. The regular response from first-time diners is to slow down before any of it disappears. After the starter parade, a short choice of mains: lamb stew, black pork, an açorda, perhaps a fish dish if the river was running. Everything is cooked in the open kitchen at the back, in full view.

The wine programme is small but excellent — a handful of Alentejo reds the family has stood behind for years, all fairly priced, all good. The energy of the room is conversational and warm; the regulars introduce themselves, and Manuela usually comes out at some point in the evening.

For a first date that needs to demonstrate local knowledge and warmth, a birthday with four to six friends, or a Tuesday-night dinner that turns into a four-hour event, Tasquinha do Oliveira is one of the great Évora experiences.

The intimate twenty-two-seat room and the parade of starters give the evening exactly the right warmth for a first date. The conversation flows easily, and Manuela's appearance from the kitchen at some point is the local flourish.