Are the older late dining hours changing because of all the tourists?

What hours are more recent knowledgeable travelers finding for both countries re afternoon hours..1:00, 2:00? and evening hours??

Thanks....

Last time I was in Madrid people were still eating well after 9:00 PM and I, as a tourist, was happily among them.

On a recent trip, I had a Madrid restaurant reservation for 10:30. People were still eating when we left around 12:30.

Similarly, in Seville, we ate around 10 or 10:30 and the places were always packed.

In Spain, I did as the Spaniards did - lunch at 2 or 3pm, tapas around 6 or 7, and dinner around 10pm (although they often do it even later).

Embrace the culture! After a few days of being starving at noon, I learned to have a mid-morning snack around 11am as I was sightseeing, so I could eat lunch later.

Many restaurants/cafes do not open until 1pm at the earliest, and the earliest I saw most restaurants open (besides tapas bars), was 8pm.

Short answer to your question - no.

Have a great time!

Karen

Tourists are very unlikely to change local habits.
As far as Portugal is concerned, standard meal times are between 1 and 2 pm for lunch and between 8 and 9 for dinner. To avoid waiting in queues for a table, I think it's wise to show up one hour earlier, between 12 am and 1 pm and between 7 and 8 pm.
Cervejarias (beer halls) are usually opened up to 2 am.

Dining in Spain depends on where you are and the time of year. Although there is not that big of a difference from region to region, it will affect the time in which you sit down to eat.

A few points to remember about dining in Spain. Lunch is generally considered the main meal of the day, while dinner is usually the lighter meal of the day and is taken after socializing with tapas/pintxos. Spaniards usually eat several smaller meals during the day staring with a light breakfast, a break around 10:30 or 11:00 am, followed by lunch and in some places a late afternoon break for tea or a beer. Tapas/pintxos follow later in the afternoon/early evening, usually around 7:30 pm (19.30) in most locations, with dinner if you are still hungry and would like something to go with your conversation.

Eating in Spain is as much a social event as it is anything else. For many, it is one of the times during the day when they can get together with friends and/or family. This isn't always possible when you're working during the week, but it is one of the key cultural differences encountered by Americans traveling to Spain. Lunch and dinner should be enjoyed and not rushed.

Lunch in Madrid, during the week, as it is in most regions, begins at around 1 pm (13.00) with most restaurants not accepting reservations past 3:30 (15.30), but there are some areas where restaurants will still accept lunch reservations up to 4:00 pm (16:00), mostly in the larger cities. Lunch in the summer usually begins later in the day for most people (2:00 to 2:30 pm) and a little earlier during the winter months.

Dinner time on the other hand varies quite a bit more throughout Spain. If you have reservations for dinner at 10:30 pm (22.30) in Madrid, you may be the only ones in the restaurant. Most people in Madrid who go out to eat do not dine until even later in the evening during the heat of the summer and little earlier during the winter months, but not much earlier. In Andalucía you can generally make reservations for dinner as early as 8:30 (20.30) during the winter and spring, but usually not before 9:30 (21.30) during the summer months, and then you would be considered an early diner. In the north, in the larger cities in the Basque Country and Navarra, dinner is usually served later in the evening, after 9:00 pm and as late as 1:00 am during the summer months.

Everything changes again once you move to the interior of the country and away from the larger cities. Dinner reservations in La Rioja begin as early as 8:00 pm (20.00) in the summer time and 7:00 pm (21.00) during the winter months. You may not find any restaurants open after 10 pm (22.00) in some of the smaller villages, but there are several nice restaurants in Logroño that are open until midnight, but stop accepting reservations after 10:30 pm. These are farming and agricultural communities and people tend to retire a little earlier in the evening.

The only effect foreign tourist have is that a few restaurants in some areas open a little earlier in the evening to accommodate foreigners, who are usually gone when the locals start to arrive.

Just to clarify, we were definitely not the only ones in the Madrid restaurant we picked at 10:30. In fact, much of the dining room was full. I don't think that it was the main dining room. We only had a choice of two tables to choose.

Granted, Madrilenos are night owls -- so it seems. The one night I was there, I was out until 3:30, and I had plenty of company.