Portuguese cuisine is extremely varied, as are its regional cooking styles. It is essentially Mediterranean, built on olive oil, garlic, herbs, bread, fish, meat and vegetables, but with an Atlantic character and spices brought by the empire's trade routes, such as cinnamon, pepper and piri-piri chilli. Fish is at the centre of the table, starting with the famous bacalhau, salted dried cod.
Regional cooking
The north is perhaps the most creative and generous region at table. From the Minho comes caldo verde, a soup of potatoes and finely shredded Galician cabbage, served with a slice of smoked chouriço. In Porto people eat tripas à moda do Porto, tripe with white beans, which earned locals the nickname tripeiros, and the francesinha, a toasted sandwich filled with meats and covered in a spicy beer-based sauce. Besides port, local drinks include vinho verde and spirits such as bagaceira.
The centre has a very varied cuisine. In the Bairrada, between Aveiro and Coimbra, leitão, roast suckling pig with crackling skin, is famous; in Aveiro they eat eel stew and ovos moles, sweets made of egg yolk and sugar in a wafer shell; the Serra da Estrela produces the country's best-known cheese. In Almeirim, in the Ribatejo, the speciality is sopa da pedra, "stone soup", rich in beans, meats and sausages. Drinks include Licor Beirão, a herbal liqueur, and the big national beers, Sagres and Super Bock, drunk in cervejarias, beer halls that also serve seafood.
In Lisbon people eat sardinhas assadas, the grilled sardines that are the stars of the June festivals, amêijoas à Bulhão Pato, clams with garlic, coriander and lemon, and the prego and bifana, beef and pork sandwiches, washed down with ginjinha, a sour-cherry liqueur.
The south is naturally rich in seafood: in the Algarve there is tuna, sardines, octopus and cataplana, while the Alentejo has tasty peasant cooking based on bread, free-range black pork (porco preto) raised in oak woods, olive oil and herbs, especially coriander. Typical dishes are açorda alentejana, a bread soup with garlic, coriander, olive oil and a poached egg, migas and carne de porco à alentejana, pork with clams. The south also gives excellent figs, almonds, oranges and olives.
Soups
Soup (sopa) opens almost every Portuguese meal, lunch and dinner, in many versions. Besides caldo verde and sopa da pedra, very common ones are canja de galinha, chicken broth with rice, the classic comfort food, sopa de legumes, puréed vegetable soup, and fish soups.
Meat
Among meat dishes, don't miss cozido à portuguesa, a mixed boil of pork and beef with smoked sausages such as chouriço, farinheira and morcela, with cabbage, carrots, potatoes and turnips; leitão à Bairrada; cabidela, chicken or rabbit cooked with rice in its own blood with vinegar; ensopado de borrego, lamb stew with toasted bread; and chanfana, goat slow-cooked in red wine, typical of the Coimbra area. In the Azores they eat cozido das Furnas, cooked in volcanic ground, and in Madeira espetada, beef skewers on bay branches.
Fish and bacalhau
They say Portugal has 365 bacalhau recipes, one for every day of the year, and some count over a thousand. The salted dried cod must be soaked for a couple of days before cooking. The simplest version is boiled bacalhau with potatoes, eggs, chickpeas and cabbage, dressed with olive oil and garlic, the Christmas Eve dish. Traditional recipes include bacalhau à Brás, shredded and sautéed with onion, matchstick fries and scrambled eggs, with black olives and parsley; bacalhau com natas, baked with cream and potatoes; bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, a Porto speciality with potatoes, onions, hard-boiled eggs and olives; bacalhau à lagareiro, roasted and drenched in olive oil; and pastéis de bacalhau, cod and potato fritters eaten as a snack or main course.
Fresh fish is superb and mostly eaten grilled: sardines, sea bream, sea bass, mackerel, swordfish. In the cataplana, a copper pan made of two clam-shaped halves, seafood, fish, pork, tomatoes and peppers are cooked together. Very popular are arroz de marisco, a soupy rice with shellfish, arroz de polvo, octopus rice, polvo à lagareiro, roast octopus with crushed potatoes and olive oil, açorda de marisco, a thick bread soup with prawns and clams, and caldeirada, fish stew with potatoes, one of the great dishes of Portuguese cooking.
Cheeses
Notable cheeses include Serra da Estrela, a sheep's milk cheese so creamy it is eaten with a spoon, Azeitão, also sheep's milk, made near Setúbal, Rabaçal, sheep and goat's milk, fresh saloio cheese from the Lisbon region, and in the south the sheep's cheeses of Nisa, Évora and Serpa. From the Azores comes São Jorge, a mature, sharp cow's milk cheese.
Practical tips
At a restaurant, as soon as you sit down you will be brought bread, butter, olives and sometimes cheese or pâté: this is the couvert, charged only if you eat it, and you can send it back without any problem. Lunch is between 12.30 and 14.30, dinner from 19.30 to 22.00. Portions are generous and a meia dose, half portion, is often enough for one. Many restaurants offer a good-value fixed-price lunch menu. Tipping is not compulsory, but leaving about 5-10% for good service is common.
For desserts see the page on Portuguese sweets; wines have their own pages on Portuguese wines, port and Madeira.