After leaving Viano do Castelo, our Caminho hike returned to the coast. Unlike the stretch of the Caminho down by our start in Povoa de Varzim, for the rest of our hike most of the hiking was along fairly quiet and undeveloped coastal stretches. This was one of our longer days (14 km), and almost the entirety of the hike was through undeveloped areas and beaches, with one exception, the town of Amorosa. Amorosa is the settlement associated with Praia Amarosa, one of the Minha’s best-regarded beaches for surfing, but the town itself is nestled behind the dunes with two separate settlement centers: the older village along the southern Praia, and the new city that’s block upon block of large apartment buildings built for vacationers. I’ll be honest, the newer part of town seemed pretty soulless to me, especially in the off-season, and we ran into the reality than in October, with the beach running only a few die-hard surfers, pretty much everything in town was shut down, aside from two places in the village. We decided to check out one of them, Pastelaria Amorosa.
Pastelaria Amorosa is, above all else, a Pastelaria, with several large cases of baked pastries of all varieties available for sale. But like most Pastelarias we’ve encountered in the more rural parts of Portugal in our travels, actually serves as a broader café, offering a full menu of meals, salads, and beverages. Which was exactly what we were looking for. Settling into some nice outdoor patio seats, we were soon joined at two other outdoor tables by groups of Caminho pilgrims, so the place apparently does a pretty brisk business.
Looking over the menu, while was tempted by some of the salads, most of them had seafood (and with my mild seafood allergy, mid-day seafood during a long hike isn’t a terribly good idea), they had a good selection of grilled items. I have a hard time resisting Piri-Piri chicken, so that’s what I ordered, getting a nice plate of grilled chicken (I prefer bone-in legs and thighs for piri-piri, but this had nicely-grilled chicken tenders instead), a fresh salad, and some particularly good fries.
Dan and Sophie did opt for the tuna salad, which was a nicely composed garden salad (something we were craving a lot; a lot of traditional Portuguese dishes don’t use a lot of fresh vegetables) topped with a nice olive oil dressing and some nicely poached and shredded tuna. Overall, a nice, refreshing, and reasonably healthy lunch.
While I was sorely tempted by a lot of the pastries, after finishing my Piri-piri chicken I was pretty full, so we decided to head on up to Viana do Castelo, our destination for the day. But I’m glad we stopped at Pastelaria Amoroso, since the food was good, the service friendly, and most importantly for the off-season, they were there for us travelers.
