Clube de Fado

Three singers a night with Portuguese guitar, from about half past nine

Fado is a nineteenth-century urban song form from the alleys of Alfama and Mouraria, sung with a twelve-string Portuguese guitar and a classical guitar, and UNESCO lists it as intangible heritage. The essential condition is silence: when a singer begins, conversation stops, plates stop moving and the lights go down.

This club, run by a guitarist, keeps that discipline, which is the difference between hearing fado and eating dinner near it. Three or four singers appear across an evening, each doing a short set, with the house guitarists playing for all of them.