Porto: A Gourmet’s Travel Guide
By Gabriella Opaz
Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on email
Share on print

Atlantic to the west, rivers to the north, mountains to the east: Porto is spectacularly placed to garner ingredients. There is wonderful fish and seafood, rare breed meats, stunning charcuterie, fruit, nuts and vegetables. Porto has its signature dishes, but it also serves the traditional cuisine of all the northern regions, copious cooking for rural, manual workers, heavy on potatoes, rice and bread – yes, all at once.
Alongside tradition, modern cooking has recently come to Porto – a little later and slower to take off than Lisbon’s culinary revolution, but now rapidly gaining pace. Every month brings another new restaurant serving sensibly modest portions on beautifully arranged plates, still based on those great ingredients, with traditional themes tweaked. Blink, and a new bar appears, selling wine by the glass and petiscos – Portugal’s answer to tapas. The Japanese have also spotted that fresh fish – there’s good sushi to be had in Porto.
If we haven’t convinced you enough, here are 10 delicious reasons to savor Portugal, along with 20 must try Portuguese dishes. If you”re craving tips to guide you expertly through the country, check out our Essential Guide to Traveling Portugal!
There are cafés everywhere in Porto, from new hip coffee shops like BOP to big, ornate, historic cafés like Café Guarany or Café Majestic. A quick cafezinho or cimbalino (Porto-speak for Lisbon’s ‘bica’ Italy’s espresso) regularly punctuates the locals’ day. And a new breed of modern wine bar is multiplying, often serving petiscos, Portugal’s answer to tapas, along with wine by the glass.
Great areas for bars and cafés:
Porto’s specialties are tripas à moda do Porto – tripe cooked with dried beans, vegetables, pigs’ trotters and offal and served with rice – and francesinhas, bread topped with steak, sausage and cheese and a beer-flavored sauce.
Fish and seafood are wonderfully fresh. Sardines – sardinhas – are the big local catch, traditionally served with boiled potatoes and grilled red peppers, and also mackerel of various kinds. But there’s a huge variety of other fish and seafood, some of it farmed along the Atlantic coast. Fish mostly comes grilled, or in a thick fish and potato stew, caldeirada de peixe, or in a kind of risotto, arroz – rice grows just down the coast. Grilled octopus – polvo – is a big thing in Porto. A clam and coriander dish famous all over Portugal, ameijoas à Bulhão Pato, was invented here. Trout might tickle your fancy, from the many rivers of Vinho Verde country just to the north, and in the early months of there year, the eel-like lamprey – lampreia – expensive, strong and oily. As in the rest of Portugal, the greatest treat, the greatest honor for a guest, is salt cod, codfish, bacalhau. Its gamey taste may take a while to love…
There’s delicious rare breed beef from long-horned mountain cattle such as Arouquêsa from mountains to the south-east, and Mirandesa, from Trás-os-Montes, north of the Douro wine region. Pork – in Porto you’ll meet the wonderful southern, expensive porco preto, the black pig of the Alentejo, and its amazingly rich hams and charcuterie, but up here in the north they also have their own special pig, the porco bísaro, which likewise makes delicious hams etc, particularly in Trás-os-Montes, smoky and full of flavour. Baby animals are a treat that you often have to order in advance in restaurants, kid or milk lamb, roasted in a wood fire, if you’re especially lucky. There’s game from the mountains. And the locals love all kinds of offal, from ears to tail!
Like the rest of the nation, Porto folk take many of their vegetables in soup. The famous one is caldo verde, a soup of cabbage, onions, potatoes and chouriço. Cabbage is Porto’s favourite vegetable, along with turnip leaves. And there are lots of dried bean dishes, laced with chouriço, black pudding or the like. Olive oil infuses everything. Portuguese oil used to be rustic, but Portugal has some great oils nowadays.
Most of Porto’s restaurants are traditional, serving big portions of rustic food that are exciting to explore, especially once you meander off the beaten path. Check out places such as: Adega Sao Nicolau, Antico, Casa Guedes, Conga, and Lareira for amazing sandwiches.
In huge contrast, there’s also a growing scattering of modern restaurants on both sides of the river, serving inventive Portuguese food in the form of petiscos (tapas), or in bistro or chic restaurant style, such as: Ameija, Cruel, DOP, and Euskalduna, a fabulously Basque twist on modern cuisine.
Vegetarian finds are also easy to come by. Check out: Epoca, O Burrito, and O Macrobiotico.
Where to find great restaurants:
The festive highlight of Porto’s year is São João, the Feast of St John on the night of June 23rd when the city goes mad. It starts religiously, but it soon switches to street party mode, with live music, stalls, wine, sardines, fireworks, and people bashing each other over the head traditionally with leeks and garlic stalks, but nowadays probably with squeaky plastic hammers. It goes on all night, with midnight fireworks.
In February in the Palácio da Bolsa (fine old stock exchange), there’s the huge Essência do Vinho wine fair, with thousands of wines to taste, but we prefer Simplesmente Vinho in July that features natural and low intervention wines. For foodies, Essência do Gourmet, a big cookery and food fair might be worth your attention.
If you’re here for the port, the lodges over in Gaia will keep you busy. Everyone spends time on Porto’s Ribeira, and a river trip on the Douro is a right of passage – a quick cruise between the bridges, a day trip upriver to Régua, or a longer trip up to the Spanish border. The Ribeira doesn’t stop by the river – be sure to climb into its little winding streets. This is Porto’s oldest quarter. Further up is 19th century Porto, both grand and modest, the stately Aliados and the bohemian Baixa, and beyond and northwards again is more modern/residential Porto, around the Avenida de Boavista, which shoots straight out for miles towards the ocean. When you’re ready for some serious sea air, both Porto and Gaia have great surfy, sandy beaches, sometimes with rocks, sometimes dunes.
Here’s a shortlist of things no tourist should miss:
Porto has a long tradition of open markets, be it permanent or periodical markets like the Christmas market. This heritage stems from Porto’s food culture which is profoundly rooted in regional grandmother recipes, recipes that contain ingredients sourced across the North of Portugal.
Our book, “Porto: Stories from Portugal’s Historic Bolhão Market” is a wonderful place to dive into Portugal’s rich culinary past, and a testament to Bolhao’s history!
Here’s a list of markets worthy of your time:
Porto has the usual top international hotels (many of them up and out of center along the Avenida da Boavista), as well as some chic downtown hotels inserted into historic buildings, some of them very new conversions. There are also a lot of new boutique guest houses at relatively modest prices, often imaginative conversions of old Porto houses, some of them offering great service and gourmet breakfasts.
During this half day tour, you’ll explore the rich natural wetlands of Ria Formosa Natural Park with
From old school establishments to cutting edge places that are all foam and foie gras, your tapas and
Since 2005, Catavino has been exploring the Iberian Peninsula looking for the very best food and wine experiences.