How the Pastel de Nata Became Lisbon’s Culinary Icon
Originating in a monastery in the early 19th-century, the Portuguese custard tart has become a global sensation. Katie Wright traces the history of the humble pastry and goes in search of Lisbon's best bakes.
It’s a bright autumn morning, and a steady stream of hungry patrons passes under the navy blue awnings, making their way into Lisbon’s famous Pastéis de Belém bakery in search of one thing: a custard tart. Combining crunchy puff pastry with a creamy, golden-yellow filling cooked to caramelized perfection, the pastel de nata has become world-famous in recent years, not least thanks to a starring role in the Oscar-winning movie Poor Things.
“Who made these? We need more!” exclaims Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone, when she’s introduced to Portuguese custard tarts while visiting a fantastical version of Lisbon with her caddish companion Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who explains that the sweet treats were invented to use up the egg yolks left over from starching nuns’ and monks’ garments with egg whites. Legend has it that the tarts were first baked by monks at Jerónimos Monastery in the early 19th century and sold at fairs or on the street outside the Catholic monastery.
“After the Liberal Revolution of 1820, the state took over convents and monasteries, and the monks and nuns were expelled. This is when the recipe came out,” says Miguel Clarinha, owner of Pastéis de Belém, which is located a stone’s throw from the imposing limestone building.
Fotokon
Local businessman Domingo Rafael Alves, who owned a nearby sugar cane refinery, managed to acquire the recipe and started producing the tarts on-site. “We cannot know for sure, but what we know is that the monastery closed in 1834, and soon after, in 1837, they started being sold where our front counter exists today.”
The refinery closed, and the company passed from the Alves family to the Clarinhas (Miguel runs the company alongside his cousin Penelope), with the secret recipe remaining unchanged to this day.
Overseeing 60 kitchen workers, they whip up around 25,000 pastéis by hand each day
Sold under the name pastel de Belém rather than pastel de nata, the tarts with the 187-year heritage are decidedly different from your average custard-filled confections, the makers insist. How exactly?
“I can't really go into the details of the recipe, but my personal opinion is that the flavor and the texture of the pastel de Belém is quite different from most pasteis de nata,” Clarinha says. “There’s this contrast between the salty pastry and custard, which is very unusual to find in pasteis de nata, which are traditionally sweeter.”
Sergio TB
Only five chefs are privy to the hallowed recipe, having proven their loyalty to the company with many years of service (and signed an ironclad non-disclosure agreement, of course). Overseeing 60 kitchen workers, they whip up around 25,000 pastéis by hand each day, sold via the sprawling café, the main bakery (alongside a selection of other sweets and savories), and the pastéis-only express counter on the corner of the street, with sachets of cinnamon and powdered sugar to sprinkle on top.
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Two days before my visit, in a shock move, the company’s biggest rival opened its latest location next door to Pastéis de Belém, the shops separated only by a narrow alley. Is the boss bothered by this bold move?
“They have a method similar to Starbucks, they open up everywhere — which is totally fine, it’s their way of doing business,” Clarinha says. Admitting the close proximity is “a bit strange,” he concludes, “We focus on what we can control, which is the quality of our products and our service. We have something that they don’t have, which is history.” He’s talking about Manteigaria, the business that opened in the upmarket Chiado neighborhood in 2014 selling solely pasteis de nata and now has 11 bakeries across Portugal, plus an outpost in Paris, with their next stores slated to open in Spain and Macau.
Mauro Rodrigues
Founded by pastry chef Rogério Loupas, the firm took a time-honored recipe and made it "artisanal," says Magdalena Henriques, store manager at the Campo de Ourique branch: “It’s an old recipe that works. And it uses fine ingredients that are local and fresh.”
She claims, however, that there is no such thing as a “perfect” pastel de nata. “It depends on who’s eating it. There are people who really like it when it’s burnt and caramelized on top, there are people who like it very, very white on top, there are customers who want it straight out of the oven.” (Not advisable, given that they’re baked at close to 750 F — a cooling-off period is mandatory.) “We always try to have a variety for everyone.”
Even the method of consumption varies, Henriques continues: “Some people like to eat the filling with a spoon, then eat the pastry.” And some visitors can’t stop at just one or two: “We had a customer who ate 19 tarts in a row in the Chiado store. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s just like Emma Stone in Poor Things!’”
Mr.C
A bit like the Benfica/Sporting Lisbon soccer rivalry, many locals swear their solemn allegiance to either Pastéis de Belém or Manteigaria. “We don’t really feel like there’s a competition,” Henriques says. “Because each place has their own thing they want to show and their own way of working.”
There is a literal competition, however. Held every year since 2009, the Best Pastel de Nata contest sees a jury of food experts blind-taste 12 finalist entries to determine a winner. This year, first place went, for a record fourth time, to Pastelaria Aloma, a bakery operating since 1943. (Neither Pastéis de Belém nor Manteigaria, it must be pointed out, have ever entered the competition.)
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The “mother house” bakery, as owner João Castenheira — who acquired the company in 2009 — calls it, is located in the leafy, residential Campo de Ourique neighborhood and has an authentically local atmosphere compared to some tourist-filled pastelarias in the city center. Alongside a dozen other bake shops across Portugal and Spain, where pasteis de nata are made on-site, a 1,000-square-foot factory produces baked goods for distribution. Unlike the other major pastel purveyors, Pastelaria Aloma does change its recipe from time to time.
“We have a main recipe, and then sometimes we make small changes,” Castenheira says. “It’s not a constant innovation, it’s only a little bit more or less salt, for example. A little upgrade.”
Katie Wright
Since he started entering the competition in 2010 (it took three years to secure the first win), he’s watched the pastel de nata boom spread across the globe from its Lisbon epicenter. “We had a minister — economy minister Álvaro Santos Pereira — who said in 2012, ‘A few years from now, pastel de nata will be as well-known as doughnuts all over the world.’ He said this, and people were laughing and saying, ‘Oh, this is crazy.’ But he was right.”
Portuguese custard tarts are now a common sight at big-name coffee chains worldwide, and they’re at the top of the must-eat list for tourists who flock to Belém or the TimeOut Market in downtown Cais do Sodré to get their fix. Chairman of the Best Pastel de Nata jury, culinary expert and author Virgílio Nogueiro Gomes, believes the annual event has helped: “This contest gives to Lisbon a better quality of pasteis de nata because [all the entrants] want to be as close to the quality of the winner.”
Pastel de nata is actually very flirty
Taking the top spot four times has been a “huge” benefit for Pastelaria Aloma, Castenheira says: “It helped us grow. We started receiving invitations from clients to start conversations and start doing partnerships, and it’s from there that we now have 12 stores.”
The way he sees it, there’s so much demand for Portugal’s favorite pastry that all the bakery brands can coexist in harmony. “It’s not like Burger King and McDonald’s. I know the owner of Manteigaria; we have lunch together sometimes,” he says with a smile.
Anna Sulencka2
Indeed, locals and travelers alike can often be spotted snacking on a pastel de nata and bica (espresso) anytime from mid-morning to evening or grabbing a box of two to take home and share with a loved one.
“Pastel de nata is actually very flirty,” TV cook and author Joana Barrios, who served on the competition jury (but admits she is team Manteigaria the rest of the time), tells me following the grand final tasting. “Did you see that when we grab them, we have to squeeze them to see if the pastry is cracking and making that sound? It’s so suggestive.”
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Barrios agrees that there’s no such thing as a perfect specimen because, like snowflakes, no two pasteis de nata are ever identical. So if you want to find the “best,” you’ve got to try them all — from pale on top to practically burnt, with cinnamon and sugar or without — and see if you can discern the difference between the famous bakery brands. Only by embarking on a custard tart safari can you find your own personal pastel de nata perfection.
