Offbeat Eats

After our pastry stop in Fão, another 90 minutes of hiking and crossing of the Cávado river, we arrived in the town center of Esposende. Another of the region’s seaside resort towns, Esposende is also a regional hub for agriculture and fishing, so the town is pretty substantial, around 30k residents, and has two reasonably busy business areas (one on the waterfront, and a similar one around the old town). However, we arrived on a Monday, which is one of the nights when many restaurants are closed. But with a short walk around town, we found Pizzeria Di Pappi, which was open, and quite popular, especially the outdoor patio, but they managed to fit us into the inside seating.

Our second day of hiking was a relatively short hike from Apúlia up to Esposende. Instead of taking the direct route, we packed a lunch and took a major detour through the Parque Natural do Litoral Norte, a large park on a peninsula west of Esposende consisting of rolling sand dunes and views of the Cávado river estuary. After completing that detour, we passed through the smaller town of Fão. Our guide recommended that we make a short diversion in Fão to check out Pastelaria Fãozense for the local specialty, which is Clarinhas de Fão (pastries made with pumpkin threads). Alas, Pastelaria Fãozense was closed for vacation when we came by, but just across the way is another local bakery specializing in Clarinhas de Fão, Pasuca.

After a nice, scenic afternoon of hiking from Aguçadoura, we arrived in the coastal resort town of Apúlia, which sports a nice, large harbor, a good sandy beach, and a scenic series of sand dunes all topped with old windmills with a boardwalk connecting them. However, being a Sunday evening, we had to deal with a logistical issue: a good fraction of the dining establishments in town, even those still open in the off-season, are closed on Sundays. But luckily, one of the town’s better fine dining restaurants, Moinho de Sal (“Salt Mill”, as in windmill), was open and we managed to get reservations.

After a splendid evening in Porto, the next morning it was time to head out on our Atlantic coastal hike. We started by catching a ride up to Póvoa de Varzim, a major coastal resort area along the Atlantic coastline. Much of the initial hike was along Póvoa de Varzim’s waterfront, and since we were hiking in October, just after the main holiday season, the waterfront’s many, many small cafés and bars for the summer tourists had mostly gone into off-season mode, either closed entirely or limiting their operating hours. As we reached the northern outskirts of Póvoa de Varzim, the settlements all leave the water’s edge and retreat behind the large sand dunes the compose much of Portugal’s Atlantic seaboard, and the various stores and resort amenities thin out. But we knew there was at least one café in Aguçadoura that still regularly operates in the off-season, and that was our destination: Café Dunas.

Before departing on our coastal hike, we had a Saturday evening in Porto to do some light sightseeing and revisit some favorite sites. We had pretty thoroughly explored Porto in 2018, and one of the areas we liked visiting was the sister city of Vila Nova de Gaia on the other side of the Douro river, and after walking the waterfront and enjoying a Porto Tonico at one of the sidewalk cafés, it was time to consider dinner. Much of the time Porto is the quieter, more laid back city compared to Lisbon, but that doesn’t generally apply to weekends: Porto’s waterfront is absolutely hopping on the warmer weekends of the year, so it was important for us to find a place where we could get reservations, hopefully for some good Portuguese food to start to get us calibrated for our walk. After consulting The Fork (which seems to get more support in Europe than OpenTable), we booked a table at DeCastro Novo de Gaia.

After our day of exploration in Lisbon, our next stop was Porto, to rendezvous with my brother and sister-in-law to start our hike. Taking the very excellent Alfa Pendular high-speed train, after a comfortable journey we soon found ourselves arriving at Porto Campanha station. From there to our hotel down by the Douro Waterfront is a relatively short walk, so we decided to use this as an opportunity to do one of Offbeat Eats Health Check re-visits to a favorite spot from our 2018 trip, Casa Guedes.

Our main vacation this year was a two-week trip to Portugal, centering on a hike from Povoa de Varzim to Caminha along the Caminho Português da Costa. While our previous trip to Portugal was staged through Porto, between cheaper fares and sitting on a giant American Airlines credit from some weather-related delays back in March, we ended up booking through Lisbon and then taking the train over to Porto the next day to rendezvous with my brother and sister-in-law. This gave us a nice day of air travel recovery while exploring some of the lesser-traveled parts of Lisbon, including the excellent aquarium. Lisbon is a very popular and crowded tourist destination these days, so when it came time for dinner, I decided this would be a good opportunity to eschew the more popular parts of Lisbon (Alfama, Baixa, and Chiado), so I found a nice little family restaurant in the Lapa district west of downtown, Restaurante Raizes.

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.