Schnip's Trips: Portugal

20 fun food and drink adventures during my partly working vacation abroad, from the Azores islands to the Iberian Peninsula

Photos by Matthew Schniper (and some by Lauren Hug).

In early November, my partner (and behind the scenes copy editor and consultant for Side Dish) Lauren Hug and I spent two weeks in Portugal. I would call it a long overdue, real vacation, but as my Substack colleague Corey Hutchins rightfully pointed out in a recent correspondence, there’s “no such thing as vacation. You’re just traveling while working. Different scenery.”

Touché. I did my best. I front-loaded the newsletter before I left, invited guest content and have been playing catch-up since my return. So yeah, definitely no such thing as vacation. Of course I was going to document my food and drink exploration and insights gleaned as I reset my palate and expanded my knowledge base. I wasn’t deluding myself.

Anyway, credit to Lauren for curating the majority of our destinations and handling the overall trip planning. Being a natural researcher, she read ahead and made sure we found the authentic food and drink items in each city we ventured through. All the photos below are mine (save the obvious ones that she took of me working), but Lauren has contributed to some of the mini write-ups below to help fill in context for this visual tour. I hope you can plan a future trip to Portugal — near the top of every expat list — yourself soon, and that our fieldwork proves useful to your planning. What I present below is in no particular order other than that which I was able to piece together from more than 500 trip photos I took. Enjoy!

Penis pastries in Amarante

I’m sorry, truly. I didn’t mean to kick off this whole list with the raciest item, but at least I have your attention. We aren’t pervs and neither are the fine folks we met in Amarante, a bucolic borough 45 minutes northeast of Porto. “This Conservative Portuguese Town Is Famous For Its Phallic Cakes,” reads the headline of a Fodor’s Travel piece. Yes, the bolos are even cream-filled for extra shock value, and the kicker is this all gets back to a Pagan-inspired religious thing related to São Gonçalo (a 13th-century saint). No surprise, there’s a fertility theme to dining on these dicks and some lore about good luck finding a mate and all that. (Not having luck on dating apps? Grab an edible schlong and see where your fate lands.)

An example of convent confection: Ovos Moles in Aveiro

Thank the nuns in convents back in the 16th century for creating pastries unique to each Portuguese region, generally made with eggs and sugar in some fashion. In Aveiro, a gorgeous coastal town roughly an hour south of Porto, we venture for one shop’s award-winning version of ovos moles. These are eggier than some diners may prefer and only lightly sweet compared to most European and American pastries. Glad I tried them; wouldn’t be top on my list again.

Queijadas de Vila Franca do Campo

Another example of a convent sweet still in rotation — which was my favorite I tried over the whole trip — is the Queijadas de Vila Franca do Campo, procured in a town of the same name located on the Azores island of São Miguel. We ventured to the bakery where they’re produced, having seen the treats in the Lisbon airport and beyond — locals dig ’em. Again you’ve got your egg and sugar component, but also milk, flour and more powdered sugar than is remotely healthy, but damn are they delicious and dangerously addictive. I resisted buying them every time I saw them.

Mercado do Bolhão, Porto

Easily one of my favorite fresh markets I’ve been to anywhere in the world, Mercado do Bolhão is a must-visit when in Porto. You can grab a glass of wine from one of the vendors (or juice or coffee) and walk around shopping for pastries, seafood items and an abundance of vegetables and preserved goods. Sardines and canned fish are a highlight (great for loading your bag to gift back home) as are confections. We ate honey bread; a requeijão (ricotta-like cheese) and pumpkin jam tart; a leitão (suckling pig) tart; a new-era convent confection tart with a secret recipe, created to represent Porto (pictured bottom right); and one of the best flavors of the whole trip, sea urchin with scallop and caviar. Epic.

Pastel de nata — everywhere

The pastel de nata is Portugal’s ubiquitous convent confectionary, found everywhere from gas stations to McDonald’s (I didn’t eat at it, but walked through downtown Porto’s famous location, which is opera-house opulent). Shake a tree and these will fall out (not really). They’re less eggy than the aforementioned ovos moles and an enjoyable egg custard as a tiny snack anytime. Definitely good with coffee, almost always present on a breakfast buffet (included in most lodging we stayed at). Eat liberally; it’s the Portuguese thing to do.

Cozido das Furnas

Think Yellowstone (the national park not the cowboy soap opera on TV). Bubbling mud in thermal pools with steam drifting through a lush valley. In Furnas, again on the Azores island of São Miguel, this is the setting for cooking Cozido das Furnas, which we heard called “volcano stew.” Local restaurants (and citizens) bring pots filled with meats and veggies and cook them for eight or so hours in the ground via the natural steam. They bury the pots in prefabricated holes and shovel (and un-shovel) sand on top, creating little cooking mounds. Nearby, we had a snack of some hard boiled eggs cooked via the method (cool shells), paired with a local beer. Back at the historic and spectacular Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, where we splurged for a couple nights, their menu calls the cozido a pot-au-feu, and presents several meats, including blood sausage and pork, with cabbage, potatoes and more amidst the medley, sauced by the pot liquor. It’s super hearty and satisfying, even if more a novelty.

Caldeiras das Furnas

The second thing you need to do while in Furnas is visit the caldeiras at one edge of the small town, where you can sample from dozens of natural fountains. Think Manitou Springs, but more spouts, and some with hot water. A couple with really hot water. Of course there’s all the claims of health benefits for each fountain, depending on its mineral mix. We find our favorites, and sip some stinkers in between. And we also carry out a fun science experiment we’ve read about, wherein you can steep one of the fountain’s water with a satchel of green tea (available for purchase at a vendor market nearby) and turn the water purple. (Magic!) Honey (also available for purchase) improves the bitter, sulfur-y flavor. This ain’t your grape Kool-Aid, kids.

Porco Preto and Migas de Morcela

Porco Preto (called “black pork” on menus) is pork from Iberian pigs, who feed on acorns, which gift their meat a nuttier taste. It’s prepared a variety of ways, and we get some fatty hunks on an entrée plate with veggies and an item that’s an equal highlight: Migas de Morcela. Migas refers to a stuffing-like breadcrumb dish and morcela is blood sausage. I know that blood sausage can be a divisive, love-it-or-hate-it item, and I fall into the love it camp. We encounter this dish on night one of our travels and assume we’ll run into it again, but alas, we don’t. Reason alone to venture back to Sintra, a lush, mountainous, palace-containing paradise just outside Lisbon.

Alheira and the Crypto Jews

Perhaps our most off-the-beaten path travel destination was the tiny town of Belmonte in Portugal’s central northeast, a couple hours car ride from the Spanish border. We were enthralled by the story of Crypto Jews in the area, who assimilated during the Portuguese Inquisition (becoming conversos to Christianity) but secretly practiced their faith for centuries onward. The Sephardic Jews went so far as to create their own sausage to blend into the culture — leaving the pork out to stay kosher, but masking the flavor such that nobody would know. They used chicken or game birds and mixed bread in for texture, smoking the sausages and creating a believable product that endured and remains popular on modern menus. Alheira, as the sausage is called, was even voted one of the seven wonders of Portuguese gastronomy by a Ministry of Culture project back in 2011. We find a rendition on a menu in Évora (a few hours south) that’s lightly breaded and fried, and upon first bite I’m totally fooled into thinking I’m eating a typical pork sausage. It’s soft, tender and a great appetizer to kick off our meal.

A Michelin meal at Le Monument in Porto

This was my other big trip splurge: picking a Michelin-starred restaurant to dine at from among the many in Porto. After reading menus and checking availability, we ended up at one-star outfit Le Monument, helmed by a French chef. As part of all the excessive pageantry, we met him on a quick tour through the kitchen before being seated; he served us an apéritif that preceded an amuse bouche trio and multitude of small courses. The tasting menu is meant to highlight different Portuguese regions, and it included everything from John Dory fish (with daikon and fig leaf vinegar) to cod, veal, vegetable items and a dessert trio. We paid as much (or was it more?) for the wine pairing as the food, ultimately regretting doing so, as the vinos just weren’t that special or meal enhancing. The food was beautiful and overall great, with just a couple ah-ha moments of transportive splendor (including the crab dish pictured middle above on the blue plate), but it’s all already a blur in my memory, honestly. We sat for three hours to take it all in, which included a tea service and more small sweets delivered with the check. I think I would love the experience for half to one-third of the overall price (around $600 for the two of us!) but don’t think I (er, um, Side Dish Schniper LLC) could justify paying this much again, despite the souvenir mini printed menus of what we ate and drank that we left with. We essentially ate for the next week across our other destinations for less money than that single meal — and this is in a country with generally lower food cost than in the States. I’m glad I gleaned the experience of a European Michelin spot for my institutional knowledge, and I would like to check out Denver’s awarded spots for some further educational value and contextualizing. Until then, I’m left with a bit of a stuffy, haute cuisine aftertaste that makes me think of rich people who can afford this with a blink and then the rest of us.

Smoked salmon burger on a cuttlefish ink bun

We’ve seen Colorado Springs chefs dabble with squid ink (Brother Luck comes to mind) and it makes me wonder why we don’t see it more on menus for the dramatic color effect. Call me a sucker, but I totally ordered this smoked salmon “burger” just for the cuttlefish ink bun that looked like an exceedingly dark pumpernickel bagel or even dark chocolate bread. This was at a streetside kiosk in a small town called Mosteiros on the Azores island of São Miguel’s Westernmost tip. More gourmet than I expected, the sandwich was also dressed with lettuce, avocado and wakame (seaweed relish), all of which exuded a bit of a sushi vibe — but as a sandwich.

Limpets

I confess, I didn’t know anything about limpets prior to discovering them on this trip. They’re not widely served across Portugal, and more easily found on the Azores as well as in Madeira, another Atlantic archipelago closer to mainland Portugal and Morocco. Limpets are sea snails, so if you dig escargot and don’t mind the chewier texture you’ll like these, though they carry a faint briny edge, similar to mussels. At a simple convenience store cafe in Mosteiros we find them, and receive a large tray typically prepared with garlic and butter. We squeeze lemon atop and mop up the juices with bread. Eat with a white wine or Super Bock lager (one of the national beers).

Bacalao

Bacalao is dried, salted cod and Portuguese people love it. They import the hell out of it from Norway. The photo at the right above shows a display in Porto’s Mercado do Bolhão that we passed. The product holds a unique pungency that’s fair to call stinky. I find it off-putting. Even when we stop into a big box grocery store later on the trip in Évora, I smell the bacalao display before we reach it. Think: King Soopers’ seafood section, but with an expansive case just for this one item. Still, we give the item a fair shake by ordering it at a riverside restaurant in Porto. Lauren dislikes it and leaves me to try to finish the plate — because I hate wasting food, anywhere, anytime. I do find it challenging to like and fishy as the easiest descriptor, but I’m able to put most of it away with the fresh side items. I decide then and there that I’m glad I tried it to find out, but I wouldn’t be ordering it again for the rest of the trip (or probably ever).

Port wine in Porto

I’ve never actually been a huge of Port wine, though I’ve appreciated small sips as dessert pairings at countless prix fixe meals over the years. It’s one of the go-to dessert drinks, of course, and most people love Ruby Port’s fruity sweetness. I decide “when in Porto, you drink Port” one afternoon, just to make sure I check off the travel box. We walk to one of Kopke’s tasting rooms because it’s closest to where we are at the time; it’s the oldest Port house; and we’re out of time before a dinner reservation to venture further to Graham’s, Taylor’s, Cálem or one of the others who host houses just up from the Douro River’s edge. We enjoy a spectacular sunset over the river just outside our window and drink some Douro-region-produced red wine as well, paired with little snacking treats they provide, including salty crackers and rich dark chocolate. Even though I treated the venture as a thing to do, I’m sure glad I did it, and would say you pretty much have to also if you visit Porto.

A fungi festival menu at Pousada Convento De Belmonte

We completely fell in love with Portugal’s pousadas, which are a network of iconic castles and convents and such that have been converted into hotels. They were established during the 1940s as an act of historic preservation, ironically during the country’s 40-year dictatorship. (I guess some good things can happen under strongmen and goons.) We go out of our way to stay in three of them, which are stunning and surprisingly affordable. The first is in Belmonte, where we luck into a special fungi festival menu being served alongside Pousada Convento De Belmonte’s main seasonal menu. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that part of the goal with establishing the pousadas was to highlight different regional gastronomy, so each has an attached restaurant. Our whole meal is great, and memorable for the atmosphere and stone-walled ambiance especially, but the standout item as a new food experience is the Trilogy dessert. We receive both pineapple and chanterelle jams with chestnut crunch and boletus edulis (porcini) ice cream. The shroom elements add earthy umami that’s enhanced and balanced by the sugary components. The chefs pull it off beautifully, such that the fungi doesn’t feel out of place during dessert.

The Legend of St. Martin

This one’s new to us. At our next pousada stay at Pousada Convento Évora we find a small snack spread of fresh pomegranate, baked apples, roasted chestnuts, and fortified wine just outside the lobby. We learn via the accompanying sign that this is to honor The Legend of St. Martin, a minor annual religious holiday on Nov. 11. It relates to a 4th-century Roman soldier who showed kindness to a beggar, leading to a miracle. In modern times, the date is supposed to mark a period of good weather. Anyway, it’s no miracle that we decide to graze on the free snacks and booze to partake in the festivities. Legend!

Big breakfast spreads in pretty places

Our final pousada stay is at the Pousada Castelo Palmela located just outside of a coastal town named Setúbal, which is around an hour south of Lisbon across the Tagus River. Our lodging includes breakfast and the spreads are simple but elegant and both hearty and sweet. We dine next to spectacular marble columns, ornate archways and at this particular pousada a lovely courtyard with a citrus tree sagging with fruit. We always eat the fresh bread rolls, various chorizo and cured meats, cheeses (well, I do, not Lauren, who sadly doesn’t like cheese), an egg dish of some sort and usually olives and tomatoes. Then there’s the lavish pastries, including pastel de nata and Portuguese croissants, a cross between a croissant and brioche. Lauren became obsessed with them and describes them as bright yellow, dense, doughy, fluffy, and slightly sweet. One of my favorite breakfast display touches in Belmonte was a frame of honey comb where we could break off a portion of honey-filled wax and melt it into our coffee and spread it on breads. (As a former beekeeper, I got nostalgic.) If you’ve noticed by now that I haven’t gushed over any coffee experience, it’s because my whole time in-country I only found two great espresso drinks (at bougier spots in Porto). The majority of coffee service is from automatic machines with fairly medium-dark beans that lend to an overall generic java experience. Still, it’s coffee and gets the job done. Sometimes it’s fun just to push the buttons and make my own red eye coffee with extra espresso added to the Americano.

Pineapples in everything in the Azores

Azorean pineapples — smaller with a concentrated sweetness — are rated among the best varietals in the world. It’s hard to argue with that hype once you enjoy them in a multitude of dishes on São Miguel. It could be appetizers, pork plates and definitely desserts. I’m never upset to see pineapple listed on the menu and we see the fruits for sale everywhere from the central vendor’s market to the airport retail kiosks. I don’t recall a favorite moment and I didn’t always grab exemplary photos, so I’m just going with a blanket recommendation here to eat Azorean pineapple if you ever get the chance. The danger is it sets a high bar, so you’ll be sad at what you can purchase once back home in the States; it’s just not as stellar.

Various national spirits

We sample several locally made liqueurs at a few restaurants and bars during our travels (and they’re usually hyper sweet), but we also make sure to check out some more commercial labels. Licor Beirão is a likable aperitif or digestif and an herbal liqueur with a minty edge. Abelheira Licor de Mel, made in the Azores, is a honey liqueur that’s heavier than mead but similarly sweet (than a non-dry-style) and cleanly honey flavored. Ginjinha is a dessert-y cherry liqueur that tourists are encouraged to drink as they stroll the main retail row in the gorgeous medieval city of Óbidos, where you can carefully walk along the castle ramparts and achieve spectacular views over the historic old town. We made Óbidos a short stopover, but it could be worth a night if you wish to linger and sip more Ginjinha, or wine.

Wine, beer and drinking chocolate with a view

I’m ending with this photo, taken at the Fort of São Filipe de Setúbal, once a pousada that’s since been retired (for structural reasons, we read). You can still tour the fort for free and a small cafe services guests with drinks and light snacks. We visited on our final evening before we had to get up early to fly back home, so this image holds a bittersweet memory for me. One last wine — I came to favor the bolder Alentejo varietals generally — and beer. And why had we not encountered a drinking chocolate until now? Best remedy that with a sipping dessert, emblematic of a sweet journey — and accompanied by a phenomenal panoramic view over a wide bay and the Atlantic ocean. It’s moments like these we travel for, perfect for reflection and contemplation, as we savor and try desperately to soak it all in before it’s over. The pink glow on the horizon captures the fleeting aspect. The wind pushes us into the future second by second. I feel full, but tiny on this bulwark, and insignificant compared to the blue waters below. With my heart open, I manage some words to Lauren, wondering if she’s feeling the same way: “Hey babe … remember that time we ate a cream-filled penis pastry in Amarante?”