Cozinha Popular Launch Fruit Picnic Party in Lisbon

Mercato Metropolitano partnered with Lisbon’s community-based kitchen, Cozinha Popular da Mouraria, to throw a fruit picnic party where people learnt what they can do to make Lisbon a more resilient city.

MM Lisbon, the Portugal arm of MM, and Cozinha Popular hosted a picnic on Wednesday, June 19, in Lisbon’s historic garden of Jardim da Cerca da Graça, in people came together to make fruit salad using local fruit grown from the city’s trees and sourced from local fruiters.  

The event was part of Lisbon’s second-ever Sustainable Food Days,, a week-long event where the public will partake in various workshops, debates, documentary screenings, and meals about sustainable food production and consumption. Events range from how to dumpster dive in search of a healthier diet to how to feed your infant using sustainably-sourced food in Lisbon.  

At the picnic, Cozinha Popular’s founder, Adriana Freire, spoke about her programme, Muita Fruta (More Fruit). The volunteer-based program, established in 2017, invites members of the local community to take care of the city’s vast array of fruit trees. Volunteers coordinate the fruit harvest and then redistribute it to the local community, free of charge. This not only ensures that low income families have access to fresh, nutritious fruit but also ensures that the all the city’s trees are properly mapped and suitably looked after given the city’s limited resources to take care of trees and their fruit. 

Alex MacDonald, MM’s Lisbon ambassador, sponsored the event on behalf of the London-based group. He spoke about the role that neighbourhood markets can play in helping communities prosper while also protecting the environment through the sourcing of food and products from local farmers and artisans.

MM aims to show urban dwellers that a conscientious approach to food consumption not only improves our well-being, but the well-being of local and rural communities while helping Mother Nature thrive. 

In line with both Cozinha Popular and MM’s aspirations of zero waste, leftover fruit salad was then repurposed to make Sangria.

The picnic took place on Wednesday, June 19, at Jardim Cerca da Graça from 7pm to 9pm, where guests enjoyed the sunset over the Tagus River.