Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
The Baker-Tailor Conspiracy
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Someday Público, Portugal’s newspaper of record, will headline “Interpol Charges Pastry Trafficking Cartel.” The article will report “thousands of disfigured tourists, hooked for life on Portuguese pastries. Tailors indicted for international conspiracy to promote obesity.”
In the year 1837, the monks at Lisbon’s Jerónimos Monastery, after starching their robes with egg whites, used the leftover yolks to make pastries. Thus, was born the pastel de nata—Portugal’s celebrated custard tart. From that point forward, tailors have been making a very good living adjusting skirts and pants to fit pastel-de-nata-stuffed waistlines.
The sweet, sweet burst of flavor is made from egg yolks and sugar baked at a searing temperature. The singed, glistening black-and-yellow tops are irresistible. They are dusted, to taste, with powdered sugar and cinnamon—or served naked.
Pastel de nata dealers are on every street corner. Travel warning: Watch out for pushers disguised as waiters and waitresses. Dieting-by-custard-tart will ruin you.
I am not alone in my addiction. All through the day—early morning to evening—lines of users queue outside bakeries and coffee shops to get another hit, another rush, another custardy fix.
Near the upper end of the ‘Elevador da Bica’ funicular, the Orion café does a brisk morning breakfast business. On the bistro table in front me, a café americano—black, strong, pungent. Nestled in a cream-colored paper wrapper, a pastel de nata. As if just one will slake my cravings.
The café is a culinary crime scene. Floor-to-ceiling windows face the street as if to suggest “Nothing to see here, officer. Nothing to hide.” Yet in plain view, there are fattening felonies going down. I am a repeat offender.
A pastel de nata takes me back to a childhood I never had. In my parents’ home, fresh baked goods were an unknown. Our standard dessert was boxed, day-old cookies bought on sale. For a rare treat, the cheapest brand of vanilla ice cream.
My parents’ marriage was a marriage of denial. My mother was denied the material goods she coveted. My father was denied the manly accomplishment of financial security. They saved their way from poverty to semi-poverty. Divorce—an emotional fait accompli—was out of the question; lawyers are costly.
As a traveler, my foodie tourism, indiscriminate and unrelenting, has no purpose beyond the pleasure of pleasure. Each mouthful swallows up the acrid, bittersweet taste of my parents’ spartan, pastry-free life.
Lisbon’s best tarts are baked at the Castro café in the tony Chiado district. Inside, the air smells of buttery dough fresh from the oven. I awkwardly fumble my pastel de nata, clumsily sucking the custard through my lips while barely managing not to drop the concoction down my shirt front. I’m a child learning to eat gooey pastries. Or an adult with a habit.
One hundred years before the invention of the pastel de nata, Livraria Bertrand, the world’s oldest bookseller, founded in 1732, opened its doors. It’s across the street from the Castro.
Surely, a bookstore this old, this venerated, this experienced, will have a self-help book on dieting.
