Palm trees rustle in the breeze in front of the citadel overlooking the marina’s upmarket shops. Brightly painted fishing boats return with their catch to a large bay lined with turreted mansions. A revving Porsche drowns out the seagulls as it cruises along the promenade, where the scents of perfume and cigars mingles. Welcome to Cascais, where the rich come to play.
I can see (and smell) all this from my balcony in the new 17-bedroom Artsy hotel, where the bedrooms come with an ocean view. After dark, the lights of Lisbon flicker in the distance. A 35-minute train ride from the capital, Cascais is where Lisbon’s wealthy keep weekend homes. It’s also where foreign nationals (mostly Brazilians and British) holiday or retire — this cohort congregate on the seven golf courses or on the dozens of beaches, which bask in T-shirt warmth for most of the year. Nearby Sintra, with its extraordinary palaces, is also a draw.
A growing number of top chefs have opened restaurants here, attracted by the big spenders and the quality of the produce right on their doorstep. I’m here with my husband, Mark, to sample some of the most exciting new openings and the recently revamped food market.
Once a humble fishing village — traces of which are still evident in the older, more modest homes (now stylishly renovated) that line the streets of the old town — Cascais experienced a change in fortunes in the late 19th century when King Luis I decided to choose the bay for his summer residence. He encouraged his aristocratic friends to take holiday homes here and the trend continued.
Some of these old houses have been transformed into hotels — Artsy is the latest — or museums, such as the 17th-century tile-covered Casa de Santa Maria, to which the Duke and Duchess of Windsor decamped during the Second World War (£3; bairrodosmuseus.cascais.pt). Other mansions have sprung up with electric gates spitting out the odd star in a supercar, Cristiano Ronaldo among them.
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The Artsy, built in 1899 by a friend of King Carlos I, is, as you might expect, an arty base. There is creativity at every turn, from the giant fretwork panels carved by the artist Vihls (a sort of Portuguese Banksy), delivering a dappled light to the four “artist” bedrooms, to a racy play on The Last Supper in the restaurant by Elmar Dam, a Dutch photographer.
After arriving promptly for breakfast — sourdough bread, fresh out of the oven — we head out with bronze-limbed locals to cycle along the juniper-covered cliffs (you can hire bikes from Aquastart.pt in the marina). Our first stop is Boca do Inferno, or Hell’s Mouth, where an impressive sea arch has been battered out of the limestone rocks. Then we go on to Cascais’s best beach, Guincho, immortalised in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the author Ian Fleming was once a regular here), with its waves crowded with surfers.
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We return via lunch on the clifftop at newly opened Maré, where Jose Avillez, the Portuguese celebrity chef, shows off his country’s best produce in a striking setting just steps away from where he grew up. As the waves thunder beneath, we eat smoky chargrilled scarlet prawns in an Alentejo-style acorda (a garlicky bread sauce) and try Algarve xerem, cornmeal with clams, alongside a seafood platter that includes the local speciality bruxas de Cascais, dinky, sweet-tasting “slipper” lobsters (mains from £21; marejoseavillez.pt).
Vitor Sobral, a top chef, is another Cascais newcomer. Considered a pioneer in modern Portuguese cuisine, he has transformed the old fish market into a destination restaurant called Lota da Esquina, which delivers top-notch cooking in a stylish space with a distinctly glamorous feel (mains from £16; lotadaesquina.com).
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For something more traditional there is O Pescador, the town’s oldest fish restaurant, where we eat scorpion fish with parsley-flecked boiled potatoes (mains from £21; restaurantepescador.com). For the market buzz, head to Marisco Na Praca, which displays its seafood bounty on ice just a few feet from stallholders (mains from £14; marisconapraca.com). We also try its marina-based offshoot, with views over the 1868-built striped lighthouse, and sample what turns out to be the dish of the trip — ameijoas a Bulhao Pato, clams steamed with garlic, wine, lemon and coriander, named after a poet (mains from £14; marisconapraca.com).
So good is the food, we want to learn how it is done, so we take a cooking course at the Cascais Food Lab, funded by the enterprising council and overseen by Claudia Silva Mataloto, a local food writer (classes from £51pp; foodlab.cascais.pt). “It keeps the gastronomic heritage of Cascais alive,” she says. With the market clattering on the other side of the glass, we are shown how to prepare giant shrimp, and how to make Joaninhas, the century-old Cascais cake which majors on ground almonds and sugar. Mataloto also shares her tip for the best pastelaria — Garrett, in nearby Estoril. So, we set out along the boardwalk to grab the last slice of its acclaimed nut-filled bolo rainha, orqueen’s cake (facebook.com/garrettdoestoril).
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The next day we recruit Pedro, a tour guide, to visit a microbrewery in nearby Colares that is known for making excellent beer with the region’s grapes (four-hour tours for two from £215; shortcuts tourism.com). Sleepy Colares is a 30-minute drive from Cascais, a beautiful wind along the coast through the windswept national park where the palaces of Sintra peep through the trees above us. It’s the westernmost wine region in continental Europe and, thanks to its sandy soils, was untouched by the phylloxera insect, which devastated most European vineyards in the mid-19th century. The vines are trained to grow low to avoid the fierce Atlantic winds, resulting in rich, saline whites and reds.
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First, we dip into the tasting room at Adega Regional de Colares, the co-op that produces the vast majority of the wine here, and taste its stellar range (arcolares.com), before nipping over the road to the HopSin Brewpub to sample its ingenious Grape Ale, which combines a third grape must with wort (hopsin.pt). We round off the morning with a stroll around the dreamy Monserrate Palace and its exotic gardens once frequented by Lord Byron.
The day ends with another beer on our balcony as the sun slips behind the lighthouse. King Luis, we agree, had the right idea.
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Fiona Sims was a guest of Visit Cascais (visitcascais.com) and the Artsy, which has B&B doubles from £172 (artsycascais.com). Fly to Lisbon
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