In the elegant Lapa district, the restaurant -- "Red Wine Nose" in English - is owned by José Matos Cristóvão, who is also editor of the Portuguese edition of Epicure, a Spanish food magazine. He gives equal attention to his wines as he does to his market-fresh produce.

In two small dining rooms, decorated with cookbooks and wine bottles, he serves a cuisine that raises many dishes to gastronomic heights for Lisbon. His Pata Negra ham, for example, coming from the black-hoofed pig, is the single best platter of this dish we've ever tasted in Lisbon. Try his deeply smoky "game sausage" with its crackly skin and tantalizing filling, or else his cod roasted with ham fat. Even the turnip tops cooked here are a savoury treat and super green. At the end of the meal, the owner himself emerged, telling us that he prefers us to call his place "an establishment where food is made rather than a restaurant."