Offbeat Eats

Well, I’ve talked about most of Porto’s distinctive food and drink: the port wine, the ubiquitous Francesinha, the sande de pernil, and the tripe. But that leaves at least one distinctive treat that’s readily apparent throughout Porto and much of Portugal, and that’s their love of going to a local churrasqueira and getting some “grelhado” action (grilling). There are dozens of nice cafés throughout Porto offering a selection of grilled steaks, chicken, turkey, and fish, usually featuring a large grill in the window. On our last night in Porto, we were unable to resist the wonderful smells coming from the ground floor of our Airbnb’s building, so with that, we decided to try out Churrasqueira Kinay for some Frango Piri Piri (grilled chicken with hot pepper sauce).

On one day of our trip to Porto, we did an outstanding “Vintage Food Tour” from Taste Porto, and our host for that tour, Andre, not only showed us over a half dozen great little culinary spots around Porto, he also made sure to stop and point out some of his favorite gems around the city as we passed by. One place was not on our tour, but on another of Taste Porto’s walking tours, and our host loved it enough that even though we weren’t stopping there, he recommended we make time to get a reservation and come back on our own: Flor dos Congregados.

Porto as a city has certainly had a lot of ups and downs in its history, but much of the actual downtown area is a product of the 1920s, when the inter-war period was actually quite good for Portugal. The city had some major redevelopment, including the city hall and the Avenida dos Aliados grand boulevard lined with all sorts of great Art Deco and Streamline Modern interiors, nicely blended with some traditional architecture. And that’s also the era when the café became one of the great parts of city life, with all sorts of politicians, writers, artists, communists, students, and the like all gathers over cups of coffee topped with tall piles of whipped cream; at one point there were literally dozens of these throughout Porto, and a handful survive more-or-less intact; one of these is The Majestic Café.

As I mentioned in my review of Café Santiago, Porto loves its sandwiches, and pretty much any Porto tourism or dining guide will recommend that you find one of several joints and try out a Francesinha. But Porto doesn’t just limit itself to the Francesinha; the pork products (both fresh and cured) of Portugal, and their love of fresh Portuguese-style rools (papo secos) make for a lot of great sandwich possibilities, so all sorts of other cafés around Porto offer up their take on the “sande” (sandwich). And if there’s any place that’s almost guaranteed to be on most any recommendation list alongside a Francesinha, that’s going to Casa Guedes for a Sande de Pernil.

After a morning of wandering around Porto, including some spectacular sightseeing from the Torre dos Clérigos, we were ready for a light lunch. This lead us to the nearby Universidade do Porto district, which has a nice selection of small cafés and bars that cater to the students of the University. It’s an interesting part of town to hang around, since Portuguese universities have a strong set of traditions (called “Praxe”), part of which is still maintaining an academic wardrobe. So several of the places by the University have a lot of students roaming about in their distinctive black cloaks and dresses. In a jokingly referential manner, one of the cafés in the neighborhood, Café Piolho, is named after these students (the name mean “louse”, so they literally are saying the café is infested).

After closing out our stay in the Douro Wine region with a pleasant breakfast, winery tour, and a tasting session at Quinta de la Rosa, it was time to head back to Portugal. Unlike our trip out from Porto, this time the trains were indeed running and strike-free, so we had a very scenic train ride down the Douro river valley until we arrived back in Porto at São Bento station in the early evening. After hauling our luggage back to our hotel room and exploring more of the town, we needed a light dinner, and decided this was a good time to try one of the local well-regarded cafés, Café Santiago.

Back when we first arrived in Pinhão, one of the main attractions in the town itself is visiting one of the several Quintas that are located right in town. Quinta do Bomfim is run by the Symington Family Estates, who produce several of the well-regarded Port wine labels (Graham’s, Warre’s, and Dow’s), and over the last several years, they’ve converted the Quinta into a pleasant visitor center. It’s still a working winery (indeed, they were processing grapes on our visit), but it’s also got a nice museum and a great tasting room (note: reservations are strongly, strongly recommended). After a pleasant tour through the Quinta and a nice tasting session in the room (complete with 40 year old Port), we then realized we had made a tactical error: most of the rest of our tour then took prepared picnic baskets and headed off to the vineyards to have a picnic dinner. Lacking a reserved basket, we missed out, but when our itinerary brought us back through Pinhão, we decided that on our second pass we’d actually reserve a picnic basket and head up to the hills.

After 6 days of trekking on foot through the various towns and quintas of the Douro wine valley, we ended up back where we started in Pinhão. For our last two nights in the Alto Douro, we were staying at another quinta, Quinta de la Rosa, located just west of Pinhão right on the banks of the river. And when I say we were staying at the quinta, in this case it’s pretty literal, Quinta de la Rosa is actually quite an active Quinta (indeed, getting to the guest rooms means literally walking right by the vats where they are stomping the grapes), and they’ve also got a nice variety of vineyards and hiking trails to explore as well. And, with their latest renovation, they added a modern tasting room and a restaurant, Cozinha da Clara

Our first day of hiking in the Douro valley involved hiking from our hotel in Pinhão, up the Pinhão river valley, climbing out of the valley to the village of São Cristovão do Douro, then further climbing up to the ridge to the scenic town of Provesende, and then returning to the Pinhão river valley through the town of Vilarinho de São Romão to eventually end up in Celeirós at Quinta do Portal, one of the area’s larger wineries. In addition to operating the winery itself, in their attached vineyard Quinta do Portal runs two different guest houses (Casa das Pipas, the “House of Pipes”, and Casa do lagar, a former olive pressing house), a restaurant, and tours of the winery and cellars. Casa das Pipas itself is quite a nice, inviting guest house, literally in the middle of the vineyards (the vines come all the way up to the swimming pool), and with our reservations in the room came quite a few amenities: free tours of the Quinta, a discount on purchased wine and olive oil, packed picnic lunches each day, and, most importantly of all, dinner.

Compared to the rest of the Douro, which generally is quite calm and free of a lot of tourist traffic, Pinhão is the epicenter of activity in the Alto Douro; almost every day there’s at least one river cruise ship coming or going (day trips from Porto are popular, as are cruises headed further up the Douro to Spain), and it’s also the largest concentration of both hotels and restuarants (although the Douro valley still seems to be catching up with tourism; most Quintas having to implement reservations, and several places having recently added accommodations). Enjoying the sunset After completing a tour and a very enjoyable port tasting at Quinta do Bomfim, and eyeing the bountiful picnic baskets that some other guests had reserved there (we’d come back and do that later in our trip), we were actually getting a bit hungry, so as the sun started to set we were looking around Pinhão’s harbor for dinner. The first place we looked for, Bar Restaurante Veladouro, apparently was temporarily closed (they were open the next weekend when we returned to Pinhão), so we ended up at the place next door, Restaurant LBV 79 (run by the same people running the LBV Guesthouse that we were staying at up the hill… if you are wondering about the name, LBV is short for “Late Bottle Vintage”, a regular Port wine term).