What to Eat in Portugal

Grilled fish with nothing on it but salt, a soup of potato and cabbage, and a custard tart the rest of the world keeps trying to copy. Portugal cooks plainly and eats well. Here is what to order, course by course.

In 2011 Portugal held a public vote to choose the seven wonders of its own cooking. Almost 900,000 votes came in. The winners were a smoked sausage, a sheep's cheese, a cabbage soup, a pot of seafood rice, grilled sardines, roast suckling pig and a custard tart. Nothing on that list needs more than a handful of ingredients, which tells you most of what you need to know before you sit down.

The map explains the rest. This is a long, narrow country with the Atlantic down one side, so fish is everywhere and is usually grilled over charcoal with salt and not much else. The north is green, wet and keen on pork, cabbage and smoked sausage. South of the Tagus, the Alentejo turns stale bread, garlic and coriander into soup. The Algarve grills small chickens with chilli.

The fish people care about most, though, is not local. Bacalhau is cod from the far North Atlantic, salted and dried until it is stiff as a board, then soaked for a day or two before cooking. It appears on almost every menu, often three times. Order it once shredded with egg and potato and once baked, and the attachment starts to make sense.

How a day of eating goes

Breakfast is quick and usually eaten standing at a café counter. Lunch is the main meal. The best value is the prato do dia, the dish of the day, in a tasca: a small neighbourhood dining room with paper on the tables and the menu written by hand. Almost every café and restaurant has a soup of the day, and lunch tends to start with it. Dinner is late by British standards.

Portions are large. Many places will serve a meia dose, a half portion, and it is often enough for one person.

Breakfast and brunch

This happens in the pastelaria, at the counter, in about six minutes. A custard tart with your coffee also counts, and nobody will look twice. Brunch as a separate weekend meal is a city-café import; the traditional morning looks like this.

Torrada com galão

Thick slices, buttered while hot and cut into three. A galão is espresso with plenty of milk in a tall glass; a meia de leite is half and half, in a cup.

Tosta mista

Pressed flat, buttered on the outside and on every café menu in the country. The safe order when you cannot decide.

Pão de Deus

The name means God's bread. Eaten plain, or split and filled with ham and cheese, which works better than it sounds.

Croissant misto

A Portuguese croissant is soft, sweet and closer to brioche than to anything from Paris. Ask for it toasted.

Bolo de arroz

A tall, plain cake in a paper collar with a crust of sugar on top. Built for dipping in coffee.

Street food and snacks

There is little stall-and-queue street food. What Portugal has is counter food: something handed over quickly and eaten in the hand, often with a small beer.

Bifana

Thin pork from a pan of garlic and wine sauce, eaten standing, with yellow mustard. Vendas Novas in the Alentejo claims it; Lisbon and Porto each make it differently.

Prego no pão

A thin slice of beef fried with garlic, in a roll. In seafood restaurants there is an old habit of ordering one after the shellfish, where dessert would normally go.

Sardinhas assadas

Whole sardines grilled over charcoal and laid on a slice of bread that soaks up the juices. The season peaks in June, with the street parties for Santo António in Lisbon and São João in Porto.

Pão com chouriço

Dough wrapped around slices of chouriço and baked in a wood oven. A fairground and late-night staple, at its best when it is still too hot to hold.

Castanhas assadas

From October, sold in paper cones from carts that trail smoke down the street. The chestnuts come out dusted grey with salt.

Bola de Berlim

Filled with yellow egg custard and sold on beaches all summer by vendors walking the sand. A little of the sand is hard to avoid.

Starters and small plates

Petiscos are small plates ordered a few at a time and shared over a drink. Portuguese even has a verb for it, petiscar. Keep the bread: most of these come with a sauce worth mopping up.

Pastéis de bacalhau

Crisp ovals of salt cod and potato, eaten warm or cold from café counters at any hour. Called bolinhos in the north.

Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato

Clams opened in olive oil, garlic, white wine, coriander and lemon. The sauce matters as much as the shellfish.

Peixinhos da horta

The name means little fish from the garden. Green beans in a light batter, fried until crisp.

Chouriço assado

Brought to the table in a clay dish and set alight with spirit. Wait for the flames to die down before you reach in.

Salada de polvo

Cold, tender octopus with onion, parsley, olive oil and vinegar. A good thing to order while you read the rest of the menu.

Pica-pau

Small pieces of pork or beef in a sharp, garlicky sauce with pickles, picked up with toothpicks. The name means woodpecker.

Caracóis

A summer habit around Lisbon and in the south: tiny snails cooked with garlic and oregano, eaten by the plateful with cold beer.

Soups and stews

Soup is how lunch begins, at home and in almost every café and restaurant. It is cheap, it is usually made that morning, and it is where most of the vegetables in a Portuguese lunch are to be found.

Caldo verde

Smooth potato soup with hair-fine cabbage and a slice or two of chouriço. From the Minho in the north, now national.

Sopa de legumes

The everyday one: seasonal vegetables puréed with potato. If the menu just says sopa, this is usually it.

Canja de galinha

Clear chicken broth with rice or tiny pasta. It is what people are given when they are unwell and what they order when they are not.

Açorda alentejana

Barely a soup in the usual sense: garlic, coriander, olive oil and hot water poured over stale bread, with a poached egg on top. From the Alentejo.

Sopa da pedra

Stone soup, from Almeirim: beans, potato, pork and sausages, thick enough to be a meal. It comes with a legend about a friar who started the pot with a stone.

Gaspacho alentejano

Summer in the Alentejo. Chopped, not blended, with pieces of bread in it, and served very cold.

Main dishes

Fish or meat, with potatoes or rice. It is not unusual for chips and rice to arrive on the same plate, and nobody apologises for it.

Bacalhau à Brás

Lisbon's favourite way with salt cod: soft, yellow and far better than it looks.

Bacalhau com natas

Flaked cod and potato baked under cream until the top browns. The gentlest introduction to salt cod.

Peixe grelhado

Sea bream, sea bass or whatever came in that morning, grilled whole with salt. It is usually priced by weight, so ask before you order.

Frango piri-piri

A small chicken opened flat and grilled over charcoal. The village of Guia in the Algarve made it famous.

Arroz de marisco

Loose, soupy rice with prawns, clams and crab, brought to the table in the pot and usually ordered for two. One of the seven winners of the 2011 vote.

Polvo à lagareiro

Octopus roasted with garlic and a generous amount of olive oil, served with small potatoes baked in their skins and crushed.

Cozido à portuguesa

Beef, pork, chicken, several kinds of sausage, cabbage, carrots and potatoes, all boiled and piled on one platter. Order it hungry.

Francesinha

Steak, ham and sausage between slices of bread, under melted cheese and a beer and tomato sauce. It calls for a knife, a fork and a free afternoon.

Bitoque

A thin steak with a fried egg on top, chips and rice. The standard quick lunch in a tasca.

Desserts and sweets

Tasca dessert lists are short and much the same from one end of the country to the other. For range, go to a pastry shop.

Pastel de nata

Crisp pastry, barely set custard and a top scorched in patches. Eaten warm with cinnamon, at any time of day.

Arroz doce

Creamy rice pudding decorated with patterns of ground cinnamon. A fixture of family gatherings.

Leite creme

A soft egg custard under a thin crust of caramelised sugar.

Bolo de bolacha

Maria biscuits dipped in coffee and layered with buttercream, served cold. On most tasca menus.

Pudim

A dense baked egg custard turned out under caramel. Found almost everywhere.

Baba de camelo

Condensed milk whipped with eggs. Very sweet and very quick. The name means camel's drool, which puts nobody off.

Ovos moles

A paste of egg yolk and sugar inside thin white wafers. Specific to Aveiro, and worth the detour if you like things sweet.

Drinks

Coffee is short and strong, wine is good and inexpensive, and the liqueurs come in small glasses for a reason.

Café

Ask for um café and you get an espresso. Lisbon also calls it a bica.

Vinho verde

Light, low in alcohol and often slightly fizzy. Verde means young, not green: it comes in white, red and rosé.

Vinho do Porto

Fortified wine from the Douro valley, in ruby, tawny, vintage and white styles.

Porto tónico

White port over ice with tonic water and a slice of lemon. The warm-weather aperitif.

Ginjinha

Sold by the shot from tiny bars in Lisbon and drunk standing in the street. You will be asked whether you want it with or without the cherries.

Imperial

A 20 cl glass of lager. It is an imperial in Lisbon and the south, and a fino in Porto and the north.

Poncha

Sugar cane spirit, honey and lemon juice, mixed to order in Madeira with a wooden stick. Stronger than it tastes.

What is changing

Lisbon's most talked-about tables at the moment are not grand ones. Time Out's 2026 ranking of food cities put Lisbon tenth and singled out the neo-tasca: younger cooks taking on the old dining-room format, keeping the prices and the noise, and tightening the cooking. The same survey noted a growing appetite for serious sandwiches, and that residents' first recommendation to visitors is still pastry. National Geographic Traveller described the same shift in 2025.