Continued Ramiro Review

Getting to the door

By the time I’d arrived at Martim Moniz the seafood that I’d watched Anthony Bourdain chew and suck was a ten minute walk. Taking a seat in the square surrounded by tea sellers and drug dealers I sat and took in the city - the rest of the city was covered in the azulejo, the various patterned tiles and pink, green and blue buildings. This part could have been where I had grown up after leaving Ireland as a child: ugly buildings and cheap adverts for haircuts and luggage. Hurt people huddled in corners and at bus stops, smoking out of windows, bottles in hands, eyes that stopped seeing. I was close to a restaurant I’d put at the top of a list. I was taken out of reality and taken back. As I stood outside the doors of Ramiro, the crabs and lobsters fought in a tank. The display was resplendent: cockles, fish, shrimps, barnacles and prawns. What was I doing there? Indulging in delusions of a life lived in anothers footsteps. Little did I know that this would become our lives. It was at the early stage then. Mapping out a life of food. My decision to not eat there that day was to one I’m proud to say I saved for a special day. The review of the food will begin then, when I get to my fortieth birthday. The lunch I walked away from led me to the area of Entrecampos. My train was leaving at four. I dampened the disappointment with cans of Sagres and batata ‘pála pála’. As the train departed towards Grandola scenes from Boxcar Bertha became the dream where I was Big Bill Shelley and Bertha slept on the matress. The gunshots of Rake Brown ruined the postcoital moment, Bertha’s red belt vanished, forty minutes had passed. In six years I’d return to one that got away.