My Portugal Food List

In Portugal, I learned that food is the language which best expresses love and kindness. 

Pleasantly fuzzed on a noisy terrace after several big beakers of Vinho Verde, the crisp greenish young wine from Northern Portugal that the Lusitanians drink as an aperitif or with shellfish, I’d ended up enjoying the gamey humor of the two couples from Sheffield who’d insisted I join them for dinner.

“It’ll ruin it for us if we see you sitting over there like some sad little limpet all on your own,” said Tracy, a stout blonde woman who worked in a steel mill.

I thanked her but said I wouldn’t be good company, because I’d gotten up at 3am to get to Gatwick for the sardine-tin flight to Faro—part of one of the cheap, week-long holiday packages that were the bread-and-butter of British travel in 1986; it also included an apartment and a car rental. Roger, my English boyfriend, had missed the flight, so I went ahead without him. She shook her head.

“I’m not taking no for an answer! Especially from some cheeky Yank!” she guffawed.

Apprehensive that further resistance might lead to a scene, I let her take my hand and lead me to their table. 

I recognized nothing when I opened the menu. Aside from the good bread, cheese rolls and egg custard tartlets sold by the long-running Portuguese bakery in Provincetown, I was completely ignorant of Portuguese food. (Had I grown up in Newark, New Jersey or Eastern Massachusetts, odds are I would have already eaten caldo verde, the hearty chorizo-spiked kale-and-potato soup from Northern Portugal, or one of the dozens of dishes made with salt cod from all over the country, because these were historically the destinations of most Portuguese immigrants to the United States.) 

My sudden English friends knew the local gastronomic ropes, though, since they’d been coming to the Algarve, a destination for Brits from the north that’s sort of the equivalent to Florida for New Yorkers, for many years. “What you need to know, Luv, is Portugal’s got the world’s best seafood. It’s just incredibly fresh, and they’re careful not to overcook it, which makes a big difference from England, where we fry or boil everything to death.” They suggested amêijoas à bulhão pa  (sauteed baby clams) as a starter, a welcome idea to this clam-loving New Englander, and then grilled sardines as a main course. In those days, I didn’t eat sardines, one of the great pleasures of Portuguese cooking, so I ordered battered and deep-fried baby squid instead.

Sprinkled with chopped garlic and flecks of something green, the clams came in a huge earthenware trencher in a shallow pool of pale-yellow broth. I ate one, and then two more, and then—what was that? I was intrigued by the vivid slightly citric but herbaceous and somewhat resinous taste of a soft green herb I’d never tasted before.

“It’s coriander, Luv,” said Tracy, who’d been watching me. “The Portuguese put it in everything, and they say you either love it or hate it.” I loved it, because discovering a new taste as an adult always seems like a little miracle. The battered baby squid doused with a couple of squirts of fiery Piri-Piri pepper sauce were a holiday treat, too. 

I hadn’t given the food of Portugal a thought when I’d chosen the trip. After an endless gray English winter, I was craving some beach-time during this week in early June. But this delicious meal took a bellow to my gastronomic expectations for the next few days. The Brits dragged me along for more drinks after dinner and then to a club. The sky was turning a pearly pink before sunrise when I finally got home. 

The following day there were no road maps to be found in Albufeira, so I decided I’d just wing it and just drive north. Surely in Portugal all roads led to the capital.  At every crossroads, I’d follow a sign for LISBOA—until I arrived at one with four signs for LISBOA, one at each corner, which seemed impossible. I chose the one that hopefully led north and drove for another hour, until I eventually found myself back at the very same crossroads.  Hot, thirsty, hungry and hungover, I pulled into a restaurant set back under several huge oak trees. It was already 1.45pm. Walking across the dusty parking lot in a T shirt, cut-off shorts and flip flops, I looked like a dope.

Behind the screen door, it was dim inside. A man was drying glasses behind a red marble bar. I made a gesture of cutting something with a knife and fork, and he shook his head. I nodded but pointed at a small bottle of water in the fridge behind him. He flipped the cap of it and poured it into a heavy glass.

“S’il vous plait?” a man in a dark suit asked in French, which was then Portugal’s second language. What he said next was, “If you’re hungry, please join us.” He was sitting at a kraft-paper-covered table with five other men in dark suits. I hesitated, but the kitchen had closed and I was ravenous. On their table were two roast chickens, big bowls of rice and French fries, and a platter of tomato wedges with sliced red onion.  

I sat down, and the man to my left served me. The man on my right poured me some red wine.

“For your nerves,” he said in English, adding, “I went to medical school in Boston, so doctor’s orders.” I ate—a lot. The food was succulent and savory, but I remained bewildered by the kindness of the six district doctors who’d invited me to join the lunch they shared every other month to discuss trending diseases and exchange notes on the region’s health. 

To make conversation, I told them how surprised I was by the excellence of Portuguese cooking. “The Moors, who arrived in 711 A.D. and occupied most of Portugal for the next four centuries, gave us many gifts in the kitchen,” said the English-speaking doctor. “They had a huge impact on Portuguese cooking, especially here in the Algarve.” According to this well-versed surgeon, it was the Moors who introduced sour oranges, lemons, apricots, dates, melons, and watermelons to the Portuguese larder. They also gave the country’s formerly bland diet a jolt of flavor with their use of spices like ginger and pepper, and left behind their love of sour flavors, like pickling olives and nuts and preserving fish in brine. Their rose and orange blossom water also flavor many Portuguese sweets. 

At the end of this fascinating impromptu tutorial in Lusitanian gastronomic history, he paused and looked at me: “I still miss the clam chowder at the Union Oyster House in Boston.” 

The doctor and his friends clearly loved good food, and our meal concluded with eggy yellow flan glossed in caramel sauce, black cherries and crumbly almond cookies. After strong coffee, they asked the owner for a clean sheet of kraft paper and drew me a map with various pictogram landmarks that they promised would get me to Lisbon. 

They waved away my attempt to pay for my meal, and winced a bit before the viniferous fervor of my thanks in the parking lot. Dr. Cardoso, the English-speaking doctor, clapped me on the shoulder and wished me a safe trip. “Remember, Alexander. The best thing about the Moors was their tradition of hospitality. In Portugal, we always welcome the stranger.”

Driving away, I was briefly distracted by the raw tarry smell of country roads made gummy by the heat of the afternoon. And then thinking about the remarkable lunch I’d just had, I got a little teary. 

The sort of shocking kindness of the doctors meant I’d never forget the meal I’d just eaten, and the clean potent flavors of the food also made me realize that Tracy from Sheffield would always be my oracle when it came to Portuguese food. 

The night before, she’d said, “The reason the food’s so good in Portugal is that it tastes like what it is. A chicken tastes like a chicken here, their ham tastes piggy—in a good way—and their fruit and veg are so full of flavor. In Portugal, it always tastes like it was grown in a garden next door, because it probably was,” she’d chuckled. 

For the next hundred miles, I mused on what I’d learned about Portuguese food during the last twenty-four hours. Then, just before I arrived at the airport to face the wrath of Roger—I was two hours late—I had an insight of my own. Almost everything tastes good when it’s made by someone who cares about the people they’re feeding. It might be a grandmother, an uncle or a parent, or even a chef, but in Portugal that intention, which is to nourish and give pleasure, comes to the table in almost every dish. 

During the more than forty years since I first visited Portugal, I’ve been back dozens of times. It’s become one of my favorite countries, and over time I’ve developed a deep love for and knowledge of its food—and I’ve watched it change, for the better and also occasionally for the worse. 

Since Portugal joined the European Union in 1986, it’s become a middle-income country, which means food shopping here is increasingly done in supermarkets instead of small shops and markets. The latter still exist, but many time-pressed people shop at Continente, Portugal’s largest supermarket chain, and similar places, in the belief their prices are lower. These supermarkets often sell the produce of large-scale industrial agriculture, including such aberrations as the tomatoes grown in greenhouses in Belgium, which I recently saw in sunny Lisbon. 

On the other hand, rising incomes and tourist arrivals explain why Lisbon, Porto and other towns have developed thriving restaurant scenes with some of the most talented young chefs in Europe. The Portuguese palate has also been broadened by immigration from the country’s former colonies, including Goa, Macau, Brazil, Mozambique and Angola. 

Since the days when the only Portuguese wines I knew were the two found on a lower shelf at the liquor store in my college town of Amherst, Massachusetts—Mateus and Lancers—the quality and variety of Portuguese wines have improved enormously. The Dao region of Northern Portugal has always produced elegant red wines, but now the Douro Valley, long famous for Port wines, and the Alentejo, a rolling grassy region with olive groves and thousands of cork trees, are making some of the best wines in Europe.

In the Douro, winemakers are making more still wines in response to falling sales of Port, with innovative winemakers like Dirk Niepoort, the scion of a Dutch family that’s been making Port in the Douro for five generations, revealing the astonishing potential of this terroir. In the Alentejo, many of the region’s signature estates have replanted their vineyards and are now producing spectacular white wines, like my favorite Reserva do Comendador by winemaker Adega Mayor. 

Cooking and winemaking vary a lot from one region of Portugal to another, so here are ten restaurants that collectively offer a delicious profile of the country’s gastronomic excellence in different regions at various price points, and in styles that range from Michelin three-star magnificence to the pleasure of tucking into the world’s best rotisserie roasted suckling pig. 

P.S. And yes, all of these years later, I still enjoy Vinho Verde, the same refreshing and winningly inexpensive quaff it was when I tried it three decades ago (n.b. the Gatão brand of Vinho Verde is widely available in the U.S. and is a perfectly good buy for a summer house party or vacation tipple). 

Casa de Chá da Boa Nova  – This fanciful Japanese-style pavilion on the rocks above the Atlantic Ocean just outside of Porto stuns with beautiful sea views and the cooking of Rui Paula, one of the most accomplished chefs in Portugal, who has won this restaurant two Michelin stars. The six, twelve or twenty-dish tasting menus focus on the marine world, including seaweed, algae, crustaceans, and fish, prepared in a variety of ways. Avenida Liberdade 1681, 4450-718, Leça da Palmeira, +351- 229 940 066 

Ó Balcão  – Santarém is a pretty little town originally founded by the Romans on the Tagus River about 75 minutes north of Lisbon airport. Friends in Lisbon suggested Taberna Ó Balcão as a charming and stylishly low-key contemporary tavern with tiled wainscoting, where self-taught chef Rodrigo Castelo does delicious dishes like risotto-like rice with mushrooms and grilled bluefin tuna steaks. Castelo has won a Michelin star for his cooking with predatory freshwater fish from local rivers and streams, such as Lúcio, Barbo and Siluro, and he prepares them with skill and imagination. R. Pedro de Santarém 73, 2000-220, Santarém, +351-918-252-808

Restaurante Pedro dos Leitões  – The National 2 was once the main north-south highway in Portugal, and for many Portuguese, the most avidly looked-forward-to moment of any trip on this tarmac was a lunch stop in the town of Mealhada, just outside of Coimbra. This town specializes in roast suckling pig, with a dozen or so different restaurants serving this succulent treat of piglet massaged with a mix of salt, pepper, bay leaves and garlic before being slow-roasted, so that its meat is juicy and its skin caramel-colored and crunchy. My favorite is Restaurante Pedros do Leitoes, where the piglets are carved and served with fried potatoes and salad. It’s a simple feed, but with a good bottle of local Bairrada red wine, this is one of the eternally memorable meals that always leaps to mind when I’m really hungry. Rua Álvaro Pedro 1, 3050-382 Mealhada, +351 231 209 950 

O Vicente – Perched by the road overlooking a valley in the mountain town of Loriga in Northwest Portugal, O Vicente is a perfect definition of a great-value Portuguese tavern serving honest, carefully cooked comfort food made with local seasonal produce and following traditional recipes. My last lunch here was excellent, including some air-dried ham and grilled mutton chops with fried potatoes, followed by an eggy flan. Estrada Nacional 231, Avenida Pedro Vaz Leal nº 4, 6270-080 Loriga Seia, +351 238 953 127 

Mesa de Lemos – Visit the Quinta de Lemos wine estate for a tasting before sitting down for an excellent lunch at Mesa de Lemos, their Michelin one-star restaurant. Chef Diogo Rocha’s cooking finds a brilliant balance between simplicity and sophistication in dishes like Azorean tuna loin in a coulis of onion, white wine and brown beans, and a luscious roast pork loin with quince in Madeira wine sauce. Mesa de Lemos, 3500-541 Silgueiros +351 961 158 503 

Flor de Lis  – Located in a beautiful Belle Époque villa overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, this intimate dining room is the setting in which to discover chef Arnaldo Azevedo’s intriguing tasting menus, which change often but showcase Northern Portuguese cooking and some of the best seafood in Europe. This catch of the day come from local waters, and it’s the likely reason it won a Michelin star this year. Vila Foz, Av. de Montevideu 236, 4150-379, Porto  +351 22 244 9700

O Velho Eurico  – This friendly, busy, bare-bones place excels at Lisboan comfort food, and dishes not to miss include the deep-fried suckling-pig-filled pastries, octopus with garlic chips, steak sandwich, and pork ribs with green peas and baked cream pudding. A tough reservation to land, so book as far in advance as possible. LG de São Cristóvão 3, 1100-179 Lisbon, +351-24-886-1815

Cervejaria Ramiro  – This is the ultimate rough-and-tumble seafood restaurant in Lisbon, a fast-paced local favorite with one of the freshest catches of the day in town and very reasonable prices as well. Come here to eat mountains of shrimp, crab, oysters, tuna and other fish. Avenida Almirante Reis 1H, 1150-007 Lisbon, +351 969 839 472 

Belcanto  – A quote from chef José Avillez heads his menu at this beautiful restaurant, which has become a Lisboan institution since he took it over in 2012: “Cuisine is culture, cooking is caring.”  

After training in France with Alan Ducasse, Avillez returned to his hometown and completely rebooted its somnolent culinary scene with his sexy succulent modern Portuguese cooking. Today he holds two Michelin stars for such superb dishes as tuna with white almond gazpacho from the Algarve and roasted squab with pastry, onions, artichokes and cinnamon sauce. And don’t miss the pine-nut and yuzu sorbet. Rua Serpa Pinto 10A, 1200-445 Lisbon, +351 213 420 607

Alameda   – Chef Rui Sequeira returned to his hometown of Faro in 2017 after working in France and the restaurants of a suite of famous chefs. Now he’s won a reputation for his modern Algarvian cooking, including the Michelin star he won this year. The best choice here is to go with one of the tasting menus that explores the Algarve’s emblematic produce, recipes and wines. Memorable dishes from a recent meal included a catalplana (a round casserole that buckles shut so that its contents cook in their own vapors) of corn porridge and oysters; octopus with sweet potato and kimchi; and half-cured cod with almonds and tomatoes. Rua da Policia da Seguranca Publica, 10, 8000-151, Faro +351-289-824-831