4 August 2026
The tomato leaves the menu before August does
The carabineiro keeps its place. The consommé under it will not: tomato is nearly done for the year, and what replaces it is still deciding itself.
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The second course has stood since May: scarlet prawn, barely cooked, in a clear tomato water that takes two days to draw out. Comporta’s tomatoes are past their best already, and by the third week of August the boat will bring something else to sit under the prawn instead: a squash water is the current guess, though the market has the final word, not us. Reserve for late August and the dish you are told about at the table may not be the one written here.
22 July 2026
Closed to everyone but one table, the 14th of September
Twenty-two covers, one booking, for a family that has been coming since the second year. The room is not for hire most nights: this is the exception, not the offer.
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Meridian does not usually take the whole room for one party: twenty-two seats sat down together defeats the point of a single seating built around strangers meeting the same seven courses. An exception on the 14th of September: a family marking forty years, back for the fourth time since we opened, who asked for the room to themselves. If the 14th was the only night that worked for you, the book reopens as normal the following evening.
9 July 2026
A new glass under the porco preto
The Baga from Bairrada that has sat under the pork since the start of the year has been swapped for something younger, from a grower two valleys over.
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Pairings change less often than the food, mostly because a good match takes longer to find than a good ingredient. The presa’s new pairing is a Baga from a smaller grower in Cadima, three years younger than the one before it and rougher in a way that suits the chestnut better than the smoother pour did. The five-glass pairing is unchanged in price. Ask on the night if you would rather keep the old one: a bottle or two is still in the cellar.
30 June 2026
A long question about four days on the bone
A Lisbon food writer asked why the robalo waits as long as it does before it reaches the table. The answer took longer to give than the fish takes to age.
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A piece ran this month in a Lisbon food column asking, among other things, why the sea bass is aged four days on the bone rather than served the day it is caught. The short version, for anyone who missed it: the texture the dish is built around only arrives on day four, and a day either side of that is a different dish entirely. The kitchen answered a few more questions like that one: none of which change what arrives at the table, all of which explain it.
12 June 2026
On the sixty days, and what to do once they have passed
The book opens two months ahead and the popular nights go within the afternoon. What happens after that is the part people ask about most.
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Reservations open sixty days ahead, at nine in the morning, and a Friday or Saturday can be gone by lunchtime. Leaving a name against a full night is worth doing anyway: about one table in five comes back, usually inside the final two weeks, as other plans change. Names are kept in the order they arrive and the kitchen calls rather than emails, since a table can free up with only a day’s notice.
28 May 2026
One night, a second kitchen
A guest chef from Porto takes four of the seven courses on the 3rd of October: the same seating, the same twenty-two seats, a different set of hands for one evening only.
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Once or twice a year the kitchen shares itself with someone else’s. On the 3rd of October, a chef visiting from a restaurant in Porto takes four of the seven courses for the night, working alongside rather than instead of the usual kitchen. The wine list changes to match. It is not repeated and it is not recorded: one seating, as always, and then it is back to the usual seven the following night.