Porto is a city that feeds you continuously and without apology. It is not a city that does light lunches or small portions or food that makes concessions to what you might have already eaten earlier in the day. You arrive hungry, adjust your expectations, and spend three days in a state of comfortable excess.
The Food
Bifanas are the right breakfast. The pork sandwich — thin slices of marinated pork in a soft roll, usually with mustard — is everywhere, and it is correct for the morning in a way that would surprise you if you hadn’t been to Porto before. The Mercado do Bolhão does a good one and also gives you somewhere to buy the cured sausages and tins of sardines that you’ll want to take home.
Bacalhau is unavoidable and you should not try to avoid it. Salt cod, in Portugal, is not a single dish but a concept: there are said to be 365 ways to prepare it, one for every day of the year. Bacalhau à Brás — shredded salt cod scrambled with eggs, potatoes, and olives — is the version worth seeking out. It sounds like it should not work. It works extremely well.
Francesinha is a Porto-specific dish that requires some preparation. It is a layered sandwich of cured meats and steak, covered in processed cheese, drowned in a spiced beer and tomato sauce, and served with chips alongside. It is aggressively large. Order it with the specific intention of spending the next two hours not doing very much.
The Wine
Port wine, obviously, but the wine caves across the river in Vila Nova de Gaia are worth an afternoon. Most offer tastings and the quality ranges widely by producer and price. The older tawny ports — twenty years and above — are the ones that are actually interesting.
Vinho verde, green wine, is the other thing to drink. Despite the name it is not green — it is a light, slightly sparkling white wine from the Minho region, low in alcohol, high in acidity. It goes with nearly everything and costs almost nothing in restaurants.
What to Bring Home
The tins. Portugal’s tinned fish industry produces sardines, mackerel, tuna, and cod prepared several ways and packaged with the kind of care usually reserved for other products. They keep for years, they make an excellent and effortless lunch on toast, and they are significantly cheaper in Porto than in the specialist shops that import them to London.
Smoked chouriço. Find it in the Mercado do Bolhão or from the specialist shops along Rua de Santa Catarina. Buy more than you think you need. It freezes.
Sal de flor, fleur de sel from the Algarve, available at the market in bags for very little money. The texture is different from ordinary salt — coarser, with more mineral complexity — and it matters on something like a fried egg or a piece of butter-basted fish.
A Note on Timing
Lunch is the main meal. Restaurants fill from noon to two-thirty and then empty. Dinner is later than you expect — most places don’t fill up until nine. Adjust your schedule accordingly or you will spend a week eating at the wrong pace.