A Ginjinha, since 1840
A Ginjinha occupies a doorway on Largo de São Domingos, opposite Rossio square. It has been pouring one drink since 1840: ginjinha - sour cherry liqueur, sometimes with the cherries left in the glass, sometimes without. The shop is the size of a stairwell. There is no seating. You drink standing on the pavement. Field notes from a single Friday visit.
Eight people on the pavement when I arrived. The bartender, who has been there since at least 2009 according to the photographs on the wall, served a Portuguese couple in their seventies who clearly came here as a Friday-evening ritual. Three euros for two glasses, paid in coins.
"Uma ginjinha, com" - one ginjinha, with - is the request. "Com" means with cherries (sour cherries soaked in the alcohol for months); "sem" means without. The cherries are the point. Eat them after.
Ginja sour cherries, aguardente, sugar, water, time. The Espinheira family recipe, unchanged in 185 years. Other ginjinha shops in Lisbon use the same template; this is the one all the others are referring back to.
The crowd at A Ginjinha cycles every fifteen minutes. Nobody lingers - this is not a place to spend an evening, it is a place to spend three minutes. Locals stop on the way to dinner. Tourists stop because they read about it on the way to the metro. Both work.
Not the bar you spend the night at. The bar you start at, or the one you stop at on the walk home from another bar. Three euros, three minutes, three cherries. The exchange rate is excellent.