Foxtrot
You ring a bell
The door of Foxtrot is on a small Príncipe Real side street and looks like the door of a private apartment, because once upon a time that is what it was. There is a brass bell. You press it. After a short delay you are let in by a man wearing a waistcoat, who does not ask if you have booked because the bar does not take reservations, and who shows you to whichever leather banquette has space. The whole entrance has been the same since 1979. The bar opened the year the post-revolution censorship was lifted, and you can read the bar's particular self-confidence as an inheritance from that moment.
What to order
Foxtrot does classics; the bartender's pitch is that it does them better than anywhere else in Lisbon, and on a given night that is roughly true. Begin with a Foxtrot Martini - a fifty-fifty stirred with a green olive, the bar's house version, drier than the standard - or with the bar's Sidecar, which is the drink the older regulars are usually ordering. The wine list is short and Portuguese-leaning; the spirits shelf includes a respectable run of aguardentes from the Algarve and a few cask-strength single malts that the bar imports privately.
What you are paying for
The room. Velvet, low light, framed jazz posters, and a slowness that is hard to come by in any city under thirty euros a drink. Foxtrot is not Lisbon's most experimental cocktail bar - it is not trying to be - but it is the most reliable Tuesday or Wednesday evening in town if you want a martini, a quiet conversation, and a room that has not changed its mind in nearly fifty years. Allow ninety minutes. Two drinks is the visit.