More insider guides for planning a trip to Porto
These are unusual times, and the state of affairs can change quickly. Please check the latest travel guidance before making your journey. Note that our writer visited pre-pandemic.
The citizens of Porto like their food, so if you have an appetite then you’ll never be short on company. Fish features heavily in the local diet, with salted bacalhau (cod) a particular favourite. It’s hard to not notice the Francesinha. This meat-based, cheese-soaked, beer-sauced sandwich will send your cholesterol levels off the charts, but tackling one is a Porto rite of passage. Cafés are ubiquitous and, for the most part, cheap. Despite Portugal’s colonial history, options for international cuisine are limited, but innovative local chefs, such as Pedro Barreiros, are making their mark.
Baixa/Vitória/Cedofeita
Cantinho do Avillez
Cantinho do Avillez is owned by well-known Portuguese chef José Avillez, and it is one of Porto’s top contemporary restaurant. Yes, in very hip style, it does have retro kitchenware and wooden chopping boards hanging on the walls. But it’s actually more down-to-earth and homely than it sounds. Before you get to the menu, there are important choices to be made about seating: stools at the bar, chairs at the bistro tables, or red leather seats in the diner-style section. Most of what you’ll find on the menu is Portuguese fare, with a characteristically inventive Avillez twist. Everything comes recommended, particularly the deep fried green beans with tartar sauce and the sautéed chicken livers with onion and port marmalade. It’s well suited to foodies on the hunt for something genuinely distinctive.
Contact: 00 351 223 227 879; cantinhodoavillez.pt
Prices: ££
Reservations: Recommended
Credit:
paulo barata
• The best restaurants in Barcelona
Semea by Euskalduna
Vasco Coehlo Santos, Semea’s globe-trotting, 31-year-old owner, is one of Porto’s most inventive chefs. He first got tongues wagging with Euskalduna Studio, his gastronomic showpiece launched back in 2016. Highly experimental and intentionally exclusive (it sits only 16), Euskalduna’s menu is that perfect combination of culinary ambition and cultural authenticity. In Semea, Vasco has taken Euskalduna’s essence and remodelled it for a wider public. Reworkings of Portuguese favourites – stuffed veal tongue, for example, or pork head – are a particular speciality. So too are the desserts: the French toast alone is reason enough to travel to Porto. Small producers dominate the wine list, many of which are either organic or biodynamic.
Contact: 00 351 938 566 766; semeabyeuskalduna.pt
Prices: ££
Reservations: Recommended
Esporão No Porto
The new arrival in Porto marks a bold new venture by this well-known Alentejaño winemaker into the gastro scene. Housed in an open, immaculately designed space, everything about the menu (put together by chef Carlos Teixeira) resounds with a dual desire for simplicity authenticity. Whatever you end up choosing – be it the delicious rabbit escabeche starter or the chargrilled cod or Trás-os-Montes ‘couscous’ for main – bank on a superb wine coming with it (invariably chosen from Esporão’s own vineyards). If you’re rushed, afternoons snacks are available. Oh, and don’t leave without buying one of Esporão’s signature olive oils or stellar wines: both are heaven in a bottle.
Contact:00 351 220 190 153; esporao.com
Prices: ££
Miss‘Opo
Miss’Opo is perfectly located. That’s to say, it’s half way up one of the steepest alleyways in downtown Porto, just at the point where your legs are saying “enough”, “rest”, “stop”. And there, as if by magic, is the front door. Once you’ve got your breath back, you’ll find it as relaxing a spot as you could hope for. Housed in a large, airy space, its polished concrete floors, book-lined shelves, mismatched furniture and table dressings give it a hip, higgledy-piggledy vibe. The menu is oblique ‘pretty salad’ but food is tasty, hearty and beautiful to look at: soups, toasted sandwiches with sides, grilled meat and fish, and cheese platters make up the bulk of the menu. In the carob pie with yogurt, almonds and honey, you’ll find a dish worthy of the walk. Oh, and if your legs still ache, then there’s a guesthouse upstairs.
Contact: 00 351 22 208 2179; missopo.com
Prices: ££
O Piolho
This café opened in 1909 and has been a meeting place for students of the University of Porto for decades. Plastering the walls are commemorative plaques donated by successive generations of grateful undergraduates. Don’t be put off by the name, which literally means ‘the louse’. This isn’t a reference to its levels of hygiene or its moral turpitude (the café’s student heritage, notwithstanding). Instead, it’s a testimony to its popularity, the name being a tribute to the ‘infestation’ of punters squeezing through the door. It’s less formal than Majestic Café and Guarany, Porto’s two other famous cafés, and remains a popular haunt to this day. If you’re going to brave a Francesinha, Porto’s classic sandwich, this is probably the place to do it.
Contact: 00 351 222 00 374; cafepiolho.com
Prices: £
Reservations: Walk-ins only
Vila Nova de Gaia
The Yeatman
The two-star Michelin restaurant at The Yeatman is, to borrow an apiaristic phrase, the absolute bee’s knees in Porto’s fine dining scene. Since stepping into the top job in 2010, Aveiro-born head chef Ricardo Costa has turned the kitchen of this stylish five-star hotel into a place of gastronomic wizardry. The standard ten-course tasting menu €170 (£153) is packed with subtlety and succulence, surprise and sophistication, from the nitrogen-frozen cucumber sauce on the amberjack starter through to the Kaffir-covered blueberries and chocolate ‘tripe’ desserts at the end. The wine cellar is also a site of secret wonders. Under the expert supervision of wine director Beatriz Machado, there’s a palate-perfecting vinho for every course (wine pairings from €65/£58).
Contact: 00 351 22 013 3100; the-yeatman-hotel.com
Prices: £££
Reservations: Recommended
Credit:
WWW.NUMO.PT
• The best things to do in Porto
Miragaia
Casa D’Oro
When the departing engineers finished the 270-metre-long Arrábida Bridge, they also left behind their operational headquarters, which is now home to the popular Casa D’Oro. Suspended from the bank over the estuarine flow of the River Douro, the three-storey building boasts one of the most spectacular settings of any restaurant in Porto. Choose where to sit depending on your mood and your company. The lower floor is a little business-like, but the relaxed middle and rooftop floors serve pizza and pasta on long tables, with tables for two outside on the balcony. A good place for groups, but arrive early as they don’t take bookings and it gets busy.
Contact: 00 351 223 227 879; casadoro.pt
Prices: ££
Reservations: Walk-ins only
Best table: If the weather is good, the roof terrace
Leça da Palmeira
Casa de Chá da Boa Nova
Even if the food wasn’t to die for, Casa de Chá da Boa Nova’s ocean-view location alone would merit its place as one of the city’s must-dine venues. Literally built into a cliff edge, the wave-splashed, semi-submerged building is the inspired handiwork of the globally acclaimed twentieth-century Portuguese architect, Alvaro Siza. That said, it could be housed in a cavernous bunker and 2-star Michellin chef Rui Paula would still have customers queuing at the door. Exquisite to the eye and sublime to the taste, Paula’s tasting menu appeals to all six senses – and threatens to awaken others as yet unknown. His creative genius finds fullest expression in the fish and seafood dishes, but Paula’s trademark imagination and flair infuses everything.
Contact: 00 351 229 940 066; casadechadaboanova.pt
Prices: £££
Credit:
Nelson Garrido/Nelson Garrido