Portuguese cuisine

During your visit in Portugal you can try many delicious and not very expensive meals. In every town there are many small restaurants where you can try local cuisine. If you want to feel the real flavor of Portuguese you should avoid restaurants for tourists and try to find small places where natives eat. Of course menu in such places are only in Portuguese, but the staff is always very helpful even if they don’t know English (what is really rare). You should also notice that payment by card is usually not available.

The first meal after wake up is breakfast. I suggest you resign from breakfast in hotel and go out. In central parts of Lisbon and Porto and in residential areas you can find many places where you eat cheap and delicious breakfast. Portuguese eat breakfast in places called confeitaria and pastelaria. Confeteria is a kind of a confectionery while pastalaria you can also eat sandwiches. One meal with coffee costs about 1,5-2Euro, so the prices are very reasonable. Typical Portuguese breakfast is a toast with ham and cheese and coffee or sweet croissaints. Also very popular are croquets, codfish patty (bolinhos de bacalhau) and shrimp patty (rissol camarão).

Croissanints are not only popular sweets in Portugal. On every step you can  find Pastéis de Nata. Originally it was a cookie typical for Belem area (A part of Lisbon).

Portuguese sailors explored the world but it wouldn’t be possible without proper food supplies. Food supplies had to be specially preserved against decay. One of the ways is by preserving in salt. Bacalhau which is actually dried and salted codfish is in every food shop. Obviously salted lobes must be prepared and cooked before consumption.

Other basic meal is sardines. Sardine is so popular, that is a symbol of Lisbon and you can find a lot souvenirs based on sardine shape. Of course you can try sardine in many different forms.

Portugal lies over the ocean, so cuisine is based on products that can be caught in the ocean. So you can try there like octopus, shrimps, clams and other seafood.

Francesinha  is a traditional meal that comes from the Porto area.  It is  made with bread, wet-cured ham,  fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat and covered with melted cheese  and beer sauce. Francesinha is actually a Sandwich, but it is served with  french fries, so it is very satiating.  

We found very good place where francesinha is served, but my friend wasn’t able to eat all meal. I barely ate my portion, so I couldn’t help her. So the staff thought that francesinha does not taste her and the waiter  circle around us and feel guilty for that.  In the end he propose us discount. It was very nice. But of course we couldn’t accept that.

For every meal you will get entrances (bread, butter, marinated olives) and it is not for free. If you touch them it will be added to your bill in the end. Usually each entrance costs from 0,5 to 1 Euro.

Almost in every restaurant you can drink juice from freshly squeezed oranges.

Portuguese don’t drink beer, they prefer vine, so you will not find many types of beer in shops. The most popular brand is “Super Bock” and you can buy bottles from 0,2 l to 1l. Beer costs more less the same in restaurants and in supermarket. 

Vine is the most popular drink in Portugal, and you can find even cheaper vines than beer. One bottle of vine costs from 1,4 Euro.  I recommend you original Porto vine like Sandeman. One bottle costs about few Euro, but the taste is delicious. You also should remember that Porto vine contains about 20% of alcohol.