Juliana Penteado Pastry

Thirty-four essential oils, and fruit in season

The distinguishing tool in this kitchen is a set of 34 culinary essential oils, organised across four seasonal groupings and used to scent pastry the way a perfumer builds an accord. Juliana Penteado opened her shop on Calçada da Estrela in 2021, and the work sits on French technique with references drawn from fashion, perfumery, design and Portuguese confectionery research.

Seasonal local fruit is the other constant, and the window display changes with it. Named pieces include a vanilla mille-feuille, a pineapple tart with shiso and ginger, a kalamansi and kaffir lime pavlova, several choux and packets of biscuits. The range is authorial rather than encyclopedic: a specialty dessert shop, not a bakery counter working through a list of classics.

A small room where the pastries are objects

A visit means choosing from a curated display in a small, design-led room rather than settling in for a meal. Service is warm and the room is handsome, and that visual emphasis matters because the pastries are presented as crafted objects as much as sweets: little cakes, tartlets, choux, pavlova, mille-feuille and boxed biscuits in a rotating counter format.

Penteado has been in Lisbon since 2018, after working in Paris and arriving through pastry work at 100 Maneiras. Her training runs from nutrition and gastronomy studies in Brazil to the Grand Diplôme at Le Cordon Bleu London, which explains the disciplined French base underneath the more fragrant, design-led combinations.

Start with the pineapple tart

The pineapple tart with shiso and ginger is the clearest way in. It shows the fruit-led, aromatic style without loosening the structure of French pastry, and it makes the case for the essential oils better than any description does. The kalamansi and kaffir lime pavlova pushes further into sharp citrus, while the vanilla mille-feuille and the choux point back to the classical technique.

Biscuit packets are the takeaway option if the tartlets are not travelling well. The reason to pay attention beyond the counter is the recognition around the chef: Juliana Penteado took La Liste's Pastry Talent of the Year in 2026, the first Brazilian to receive it. What that recognises is visible in the case, where the most rewarding order is not a generic sweet but one of the rotating compositions that ties fruit, fragrance and technique together.