Lunch With Colleagues Near São Bento

Booking a table for a group

Lunch runs Monday to Saturday, 12:30 to 15:00. Closed Sundays. Two ways to book:

• Phone — +351 213 952 639
• Email — ilmatriciano.info@gmail.com

For a table of colleagues, phone or email is the surest route. The dining room is around fifty seats — small enough that a party of six is a meaningful share of the floor, and small enough that the kitchen wants to know you are coming. A same-day walk-in with a group is not a plan.

Timing it inside the window

Service is a two-and-a-half-hour window, not a rolling all-day kitchen. That is the constraint worth planning around:

Dinner is a separate service, 19:30 to 23:00, if the meeting moves.

Is it a room you can talk in?

This is the part most restaurant pages assert and cannot evidence. The available evidence is a Portuguese critic's, and she filed the restaurant under a headline that answers the question directly — "Restaurantes para não ver nem ser visto", restaurants for neither seeing nor being seen:

"Lisbon has several pleasant cantinas, focused on pizza, but few gastronomic Italian restaurants. For the days when the longing bites, there's the tiny Il Matriciano, run by the lovely couple Alessandro and Stefania. I've been there several times."

— Mesa Marcada, "Restaurantes para não ver nem ser visto," Cristiana Beltrão, 20 August 2021 (translated from Portuguese)

Beyond that, the facts: fifty seats indoors, close-set tables, no music-led room. Twenty more on a covered esplanade at the front, plus ten uncovered outside — the esplanade is the option when the table is larger or the conversation is one you would rather have with air around it.

On the service, Casalmisterio in 2016: "Os empregados são todos italianos, o que lhes dá um certo charme, e muitíssimo simpáticos e profissionais." — "The staff are all Italian, which gives them a certain charm, and extremely pleasant and professional." (Casalmisterio, 27 September 2016, translated from Portuguese)

What to order when the table has an agenda

The kitchen is Roman and pasta-led. For a group with a clock, the three signatures are the safe centre of the menu:

• Tonnarelli all'Amatriciana — guanciale from Sano di Amatrice, tomato, Pecorino Romano DOP, chilli. The dish the restaurant is named after.
• Tonnarelli cacio e pepe — Pecorino Romano DOP and black pepper. Vegetarian.
• Mezze maniche carbonara — guanciale, egg yolk, Pecorino Romano DOP, black pepper. No cream.

The dry pasta comes from Pastificio Verrigni (Roseto degli Abruzzi, Abruzzo) and La Pasta di Aldo (Monte San Giusto, Marche), both recognised by Gambero Rosso International, with fresh shapes made in-house.

Around them, the menu carries Spaghetti con vongole e bottarga, Ravioli di burrata (vegetarian), Trofie spigola e limone, Fettuccine al ragù bianco, Risotto scampi e arance, Tagliata rucola e grana and Polpo all'arrabbiata — enough range that a mixed table with a vegetarian and someone who does not want pasta is not a problem.

The Roman Pasta Tradition covers the Roman canon; Fresh Pasta in Lisbon covers the pasta itself.

Getting there

Rua de São Bento 107, in the São Bento neighbourhood — the parliamentary quarter, directly opposite the Assembleia da República. The street runs between Largo do Rato and Praça das Flores.

If your table is arriving from Parliament specifically, Italian Lunch Near Parliament has the walk and the proximity detail. For buses, metro and parking, Where to Eat Near São Bento covers the street itself.

A March 2026 TripAdvisor review, on both the location and the food: "this is a super little restaurant — with a little bit of style — very near the parliament — service delicious food. […] The pasta and risotto rice absolutely masterfully cooked. Flavours deep and luxurious." (eddi10c, TripAdvisor)

Time Out's English edition describes it as "part of the wave of good Italian restaurants to have opened in Lisbon in recent years, where the raw material, much of it coming from Italy, is taken very seriously by Alessandro Lagana, the owner" (Time Out Lisbon). TripAdvisor shows 4.2/5 across 374 reviews and Google 4.5/5 across roughly 1,144.