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Brasileira do Chiado, founded on November 19, 1905 at Rua Garrett nºs. 120-122, in Chiado, is one of the three oldest cafés in Lisbon, which spanned the entire 19th century. XX and remain open.

The Building at Rua Garrett, nº 102 to 122, where Brasileira do Chiado is located, and which also houses the David & David Store, Pastelaria Bénard, Livraria Sá da Costa and Hotel Borges, is classified as a Property of Public Interest since 1997.

History of Coffee

Similar to the original purposes of its founder, and doing justice to the original motto, A Brasileira do Chiado continues to import coffee, with special predominance from Brazil, where some of the most awarded beans in the world are produced, for the excellence of the entire production process. – from cultivation to roasting.

The origin of the "Bica"

It was at Brasileira do Chiado that the term «bica» was born, which would be, among the various existing versions, the abbreviation of “drink this with sugar”, an incentive to make coffee (a novelty at the time) more pleasant for customers. , while creating a habit for them and marking a ritual.

Another version says that the name came from the fact that the coffee was served directly into the cups from the taps (or «spouts») of the machines where it was made, because customers considered that the intermediate passage to the coffee maker made it lose flavor, having the term been adopted as a synonym for a cafe, until today.

Adriano Telles, the founder

Adriano Teles was born in Alvarenga, Arouca, where curiously Fernando Pessoa, a frequent visitor to the cafe, also had family roots on his father's side. Still young, Adriano Teles emigrated to Brazil, where he founded a commercial establishment - "Aopreço Fixo" - which included an exchange office. He devoted himself to agricultural production, particularly coffee, which he grew rich with at the end of the 19th century.

Returning to Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century due to his wife's health problems, he created a network of points of sale for the coffee he produced and imported from Brazil: the famous "Brasileiras".

But Adriano Telles was also a man of culture, with an interest in music and painting. He founded the Banda de Alvarenga, financing the purchase of his first instruments, and made the Brasileira do Chiado, the first museum of modern art in Lisbon. In Brazil, still in the 19th century, he passed through the press and politics, having been Councilor of the Chamber of the city where he married and settled. In 1908, it remodeled, creating the cafeteria.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)

His childhood was spent in South Africa at a Catholic school, where he received a British education that provided him with a deep contact with the English language and which opened the door for him to work in the translation of literary works such as Shakespeare or Edgar Allan Poe.

After a youth spent in Durban, Fernando Pessoa definitely returns to Lisbon at the age of 17, isolating himself from his family, and begins to contact Portuguese artists and writers in regular meetings and gatherings in the most emblematic cafes of the city, such as Brasileira do Chiado. , which would honor him on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in a statue by master Lagoa Henriques.

In 1915 he participated, with Almada Negreiros, Santa-Rita Pintor and Mário de Sá Carneiro in the literary magazine Orpheu, which was born precisely at the tables of A Brasileira and which launched the modernist movement in Portugal, causing some scandal and much controversy at a time when Conservatism reigned.

Throughout his life he was also a philosopher, playwright, essayist, translator, publicist, astrologer, inventor, businessman, commercial correspondent, literary critic and political commentator – although none with the immense pleasure that poetry offered him. He was always a regular at A Brasileira in its many heteronyms: Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos and Alberto Caeiro.

Personal use glasses by Fernando Pessoa on display at A Brasileira do Chiado (donated by the Bread Museum)

While alive, he published only four of his works: in English, the only one in Portuguese being the Message, but also the most impressive of all. He died aged 47, having left a legacy of incalculable literary and cultural value in the Portuguese language. Robert Hass, American poet, said: "Other modernists invented masks through which they occasionally spoke... Pessoa invented entire poets."

The Brazilian and the Art

Praxedes bought a fascicle of the Orpheu, the organ of the luaric poets of Brazileira do Chiado. He read it all from cover to cover, from Mr. Luiz de Montalvor, whose syntax reminded him of the compositions of Mr. Quico, even the opiate odes of Mr. Alvaro de Campos, passing through the elocubrations of Mr. Mario de Sa-Carneiro, who, at certain moments in his life, «climbs himself up as if on a rope ladder» and sees «his own arms go dancing in their tails to the Viceroy’s balls», something that doesn’t happen all the time. us.
André Brun, "Futurist Praxedes", A Capital: republican daily of the night,n.º 1671, March 31, 1915, p. 1.

With the freedom of assembly and association after the establishment of the Portuguese Republic, on October 5, 1910, and the installation of the Republican Directory in Largo de São Carlos, in the meantime renamed Largo do Directory, A Brasileira became one of the most popular cafés in Lisbon due to its proximity.

From that time on, A Brasileira was the setting for numerous intellectual, artistic and literary gatherings. Writers and artists passed through there, gathered around the poet-general Henrique Rosa, who would go on to found Revista Orpheu.

In 1925, A Brasileira began to exhibit eleven canvasses by seven Portuguese painters of the new generation, who at that time frequented the café, selected by José Pacheko: Almada Negreiros, António Soares, Eduardo Viana, Jorge Barradas (with two paintings each), Bernardo Marques, Stuart Carvalhais and José Pacheko himself.

This "museum" was renovated in 1971, with eleven new canvases by painters of the time: António Palolo, Carlos Calvet, Eduardo Nery, Fernando Azevedo, João Hogan, João Vieira, Joaquim Rodrigo, Manuel Baptista, Nikias Skapinakis, Noronha da Costa, and Wasp.

Similar to the original purposes of its founder, and doing justice to the original motto, A Brasileira do Chiado continues to import coffee, with special predominance from Brazil, where some of the most awarded beans in the world are produced, for the excellence of the entire production process. – from cultivation to roasting.