Lisbon - Post Report Question and Answers
How would you describe the availability and cost of groceries and household supplies relative to your home country?
Cascais is more expensive than the city, so really it's not much cheaper than DC. We've been able to find most things, with the exception of certain Asian foods. - Apr 2021
Cheaper and better. With the growing cosmopolitan nature of Lisbon, you can also find ethnic markets with just about every kind of groceries in the city. Organic food and cleaning products are also readily available. - Sep 2016
If you go to the local markets it is cheap. Buy your meats at the local butcher. Much better quality than in D.C. - Aug 2015
I think groceries such as meats/fruits/vegetables are not more expensive than the states. Chicken and lunch meat definitely cheaper. I love prosciutto and it is abundant here and about half the price. Electronics, beauty care tend to be more expensive. - Jul 2015
The NEX (Navy exhange) will make a huge difference in keeping your shopping bill manageable if you work at the embassy. Supermarkets run at European prices. - Jun 2012
You can find just about anything (expect perhaps Mexican ethnic ingredients).Costs are generally higher than in the US, but not much higher than an expensive city. Beef is very expensive, but fish, chicken and good pork are reasonably priced. We lose on the exchange rate. Often prices are what you would expect in the US, but in Euros (if I'd pay $2 in the US, I might pay 2-3 euros here and lost on the exhange rate plus much higher taxes - up to 25%, but less on many fresh food items) - Oct 2011
Nothing in Portugal is cheap -- except for wine and cod fish. But most foods are not terribly expensive. And the Embassy has a smallish NEX that sells a lot of U.S. goods at U.S. prices (though they tend to run out of some things -- like ice cream and Diet Coke -- over and over). - Aug 2011
Wine, beer, olives, and olive oil are cheap and good. Everything else is expensive -- not Paris expensive but expensive all the same. U.S. Embassy staff have access to the Navy Exchange, which has a lot of American food at decent prices. - Aug 2010
Groceries are pretty pricy, except for fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish. The Embassy has a military supermarket on the premises for all processed and/or frozen foods at rock bottom prices.thanks to this military supermarket, our food bills dropped considerably by coming here. - Sep 2008
