The restaurant is located in the centre of Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, one of Lisbon’s most unusual green spaces, which locals more often call Campo de Santana. This small green space on a hill has a long and eventful history: in the 16th century it housed a slaughterhouse; from 1831 to 1889, a bullring; for half a century, the Feira da Ladra flea market; and later, a vegetable market.
Today, it is 2.5 hectares of romantic 19th-century landscaped park, with a pond and ducks, peacocks, roosters and chickens roaming freely across the lawns. La Villa’s glass façade overlooks this pond, turning lunch here into an opportunity to watch the park’s unhurried, almost rural life.
La Villa opened in the summer of 2021 and is now five years old. The location itself is not new to Lisbon residents: before La Villa, the restaurant O Coreto operated here for almost three decades, beginning in 1988. La Villa was founded by Klodjan Taci, who is originally from Albania but trained in the culinary arts in Italy.
The menu is extensive, with wood-fired pizza, homemade pasta, risotto, meat and fish. But I come here for the beef tartare. At €18, it is of course above the average price for a starter in Lisbon. Yet this is one of those rare cases where the price is entirely justified. Excellent meat, impeccable knife work and the right balance of spices, capers and seasoning: nothing excessive and nothing missing. This is one of those tartares that makes you stop comparing it with others. You simply enjoy every bite.
Alongside the tartare, the menu includes more than 20 pizzas (€8–15) and about 14 pasta dishes (€8–14.50), plus a separate selection of eight fresh homemade pasta dishes (€9–14.50).
Pizza della casa (€15) is the restaurant’s signature pizza, topped with mozzarella, beef carpaccio, Gorgonzola flakes, truffle and Parmesan.
Fresh pasta La Villa (€14.50) is seafood pasta in a tomato sauce, served beneath a baked dough “lid”. The presentation is striking, and breaking through the crust before eating is a pleasure in itself.
Children always love the park and the pizza, as well as the carbonara.
However good the desserts here may be, after dinner I would leave the restaurant, cross the road diagonally and stop by Mú — Gelato & Caffè. This small Italian gelateria has long been considered one of the best in the city.
