Bifana and deep-fried sardines

On our last full day in Porto, we tried bifana, Portugal’s pork steak sandwich. Some people say Porto’s is better than Lisbon’s, so we wanted to try it in Porto.

Just like the francesinha, we can find this all over the place, but some are better than others. We went to one of the recommended places, Conga, which calls itself Casa das Bifanas (house of bifanas).

They say that bifanas go best with beer, but we weren’t fans of beer, so when I saw sangria on the menu, I ordered one for my mother to try. I had tried it in France when they put fruits into wine during gatherings, but here it tasted a lot better; is it because they used better wine or used better portions?

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this; with meaty sandwiches, I like it when the meatiness is balanced by veggies. It seems that the Portuguese are a fan of meat and meat (the francesinha is another example :P ).

We also ordered a plate of croquettes, because we felt that two bifanas may be too much, but ordering only one for two people seemed weird...

It came with that tiny bit of sauce...

I can't really remember how it tasted. I think the outside was crispy, but the inside was not that special.

That night we tried to find a place nearby for dinner, and my mother found one extremely close by called Novo Paris. It is in a small alley just behind our hotel, a very small path that we never noticed.

huge selection of wines

It is a very small restaurant with few people inside, so when no one was behind the bar, I snapped photos of the wine bottles. Some bottles were placed on the bar as people ordered them. In the picture below, we can see ruby and tawny port bottles. We ordered one of them...but I can't remember which.

port wine

They poured us so little...my mother said they were ripping us off! But later in Lisbon, I did see port wine being quite expensive...so maybe it's simply expensive?

deep-fried sardines

The sardines were so crispy and good. 

grilled seabass

This was really good too.

At the end of the meal, we added codfish cakes because reviews said that they were really good, and we hadn't had good codfish cakes.

codfish cakes

And yes, these codfish cakes were really good! The exterior was very crispy indeed. It's a pity we didn't take a photo of the interior...

If we ever go to Porto again, we need to visit this restaurant again. 

Must-try Porto sandwich

After a late lunch of tripe stew, for dinner we hunted down a restaurant serving francesinha, a specialty of Porto. There are lots of restaurants that serve this; we just had to decide which one, because some are more cheesy, some are more meaty, etc. We opted for Churrasqueira Moura because it was not too far away, and the photos and reviews looked decent. 

(Note: A “churrasqueira” is actually a grill house. The photos of their grilled meat looked awesome…but unfortunately we didn’t have enough stomach space for them…and trying francesinha was a must!)

We ordered a single-person portion to share, even though there was a double-portion for sharing. The waiter told us that it wasn’t big. He was quite chatty; after it arrived, he came back to ask us, “It’s small, right?” And we said it was big, haha. After that we ordered dessert so that it wouldn’t look too bad that we only ordered such a “small” portion. :P

menu cover

We ordered a jug of house wine, which was about 300ml (I think) but quite cheap. Unfortunately it didn't taste very good.

we poured it ourselves; there's more left in the jar!

the francesinha

The sandwich (my friend Eduard calls it a "cholesterol sandwich", probably because of all the meats inside) is served with fries. I think that if it had only half the fries, it would actually be a normal portion for a normal eater. But we were small eaters and we had had a huge and late lunch, so this was enough for us both.

After taking off the slice of cheese on top, we discover an egg.

slicing through to see the layers of meat

placing all the ingredients out on the plate

From left to right: On the top row there is steak, egg, and cheese. On the bottom row there is bread (I think :P ), ham and meatloaf, and sausage. I hope I didn't make any mistakes. :P

We already expected from the description that we wouldn't be a fan of this dish, and we were right. (Snorlax would be a big fan.) But our visit to Porto would not be complete without trying it once.

After finishing the main dish, we called our chatty waiter back and asked for a passionfruit cheesecake. We had taken a look at the dessert display before eating. And besides desserts, the display actually had appetizers as well. In fact, they brought us an appetizer platter before we ordered, but I had found from my research that they would charge us for it, so we declined. (On a side note, I heard recently that in Japan, appetizers brought to you like this are a table charge and they are not optional. But they say that they are cheap and tasty.)

The cheesecake was very light, more like a solid mousse. We liked it. I remember it wasn't very expensive either...maybe 3 euros?

The waiter actually forgot to charge us for the cheesecake which we ordered later. When we told him that after he brought us the bill, he thanked us profusely (or maybe exaggeratedly). My father would say, why didn't you just pay and leave? :P But there were so few items on the receipt, whereas we had just finished our dessert...it would have been so hard to justify not seeing the mistake. And who knows we might want to go back again the next day...

The next morning we had breakfast in a bakery/eatery called Confeitaria Bella Roma. It is very near to our hotel; just opposite the kebab shop that I mentioned in an earlier post.

Again, we selected pastries by looking at the display.

I can't recall whether they cut the round ball for us, or whether we forgot to take a photo until after we cut it. :P

this was a let-down, because we didn't expect the inside to be just dense sweet bread

hot chocolate and coffee (the chocolate was again not very thick)

veal pie (I seem to remember that we asked at the counter and they said it was veal)

custard cream inside the chocolate-covered puff

Did I forget to take a photo of this earlier? Is that why there's such a short piece left in the photo? :P

Overall, this shop was meh. It's not bad, there was just no wow factor. Which is why for our breakfast the next day, we opted to buy from the wonderful Pastelaria e Confeitaria Moura instead. :P (Psst...did you notice? Both the pastry shop and the grillhouse where we had the Porto sandwich have the same name.)

Liquor-filled chocolate cups and tripe stew

We had heard about ginjinha, a cherry liquor famous in Lisbon (the name is often shortened to “ginja”. When walking along the Douro river (on the other side of the river) in Porto, we noticed a shop advertising ginja. I had read that ginja is served in tiny chocolate cups. So when I saw that they had chocolate cups lined up on a tray outside the shop (under a transparent cover, like those you see in bakeries), we decided to stop and try it.

My mother wanted to share one (most of the time we just share one drink), until I showed her the size of the cups. :P 

The lady poured us two cups and placed them on a tray.

I took a look inside the shop and saw that they had codfish cakes and a few other fried snacks. We decided to try a codfish cake, and it turned out to be not good at all. It was cold and not crispy.

To show you how tiny the cups are, the codfish cake here is sitting on a normal-sized napkin.

And here a funny thing happened…after my mother had finished her ginja (which she declared as extremely tasty, and I agree), she placed the cup back onto the tray. I was like, the cup is for you to eat! As I told her, it was lucky that she didn’t toss the cup into a trash bin like a disposable cup. 

Anyway, this fortified us for our climb uphill to Jardim do Morro. (not really, probably our breakfast did)

After that we returned to the area near our hotel and wanted to eat at O Rápido, a restaurant famous for its tripas à moda do Porto (Porto-style tripe). The restaurant has received numerous accolades, as we saw from its window. (or door?) They said they were fully booked, and when we asked to reserve a slot, they told us we could return at 1:30pm (it was around noon at that time). So we returned to our hotel and took a rest before going back to O Rápido.

A short digression: I really love this cute panda on what I suppose is a ramen shop. We passed this when looking for O Rápido (by the way, it is really hidden in a small alley; we would never have found it if we weren't specially looking for it).  

So at 1:30pm we managed to order our tripe.

the restaurant is on a sloping road

vinho verde (literally "green wine", but they say it is actually "young wine")

We actually asked for tap water (which is free, as I read before going to Portugal), but they said they didn’t serve tap water. So we ordered a vinho verde to share. It is a specialty of Portugal that we were planning to try anyway. After this, we didn’t attempt asking for tap water in any other restaurant…we simply ordered a drink to share each time.

The Porto tripe dish is a portion for two, and it is served with rice.

It's huge! (we weren't surprised any more :P )

my mother holding up some of the ingredients for my photo

various ingredients on my plate (we tried to make sure that everything can be seen)

There is meat (very tender), tripe, tendon, beans, and some carrot. (not sure whether I forgot anything; it was so long ago) Anyway it was really delicious. A very hearty stew that goes perfectly with rice. (It wasn't exactly white rice like ours, more like the kind of rice we find in France. I don't know how to describe it.)

But since we aren't big eaters, we focused on the stew and left quite some rice behind. This was one of our favourite meals in Porto.

Pastéis de nata that we dream about

The third morning in Porto, we tried Natas D’Ouro, an egg tart shop also near our hotel. This shop is the one that redeemed Portuguese egg tarts for us (as mentioned, we didn't like the ones we tried on our first day there). It turned out to be our favourite for egg tarts.

This shop was recommended as having lots of flavours of egg tarts.

card on the table (unfortunately the words turned out blurry)

beside our table (again, unfortunately the words are blurry)

They have six kinds of sweet tarts, and six kinds of savoury tarts. There was a cheaper price if we buy a box of six, but we wouldn’t be able to mix the sweet and savoury kinds. So we decided to buy them individually. 

Among the sweet tarts, we selected a normal tart, a chocolate one (which we later regretted because they simply put some chocolate sauce on a normal one), and a port-flavoured tart (which turned out to not have much port taste). And we tried one savoury tart (I can’t really remember but I think we opted for codfish). 

savoury one on the left, and the original is on the top right

They provided us cinnamon powder in a shaker.

tarts with our drinks (I think I ordered hot milk)

how the custard looks like

Even though the different flavours did not impress us, basically the tarts were very good. We loved both the pastry and the custard. This was when we realized how good a Portuguese egg tart could be.

They were so good that on our last full day in Porto, we decided to go and get a couple of egg tarts in the afternoon (we were resting in the hotel after visiting the Crystal Palace Gardens, to recharge for Lisbon). There was no other chance to eat them again!

Aha, the name of the flavours are clearer on this box

this time we went for the original flavour, saving 10 euro cents per tart :P

They have multiple shops in Portugal, but probably only the northern part. There is no shop in Lisbon. We checked that they had a shop in Madrid, and I was even thinking of getting some when we were there, but the prices in Spain are higher, so in the end we didn’t (we actually even passed the shop without planning to). If Porto were our final stop before returning to Malaysia, we would have bought some back home. 

Ah, and a quick note: Even in Porto itself, the shops seem to have different pricing. We had these in the shop near our hotel. When we went across the river, we saw another branch there, and the prices were slightly lower. Maybe because our hotel is in the central area? I still find it strange because across the river is still a touristic area...

Pastries worth having twice!

The upcoming few posts shall be about food!

I have already written about the snacks that we tried on our first day in Porto, and food that we had in Aveiro.

The morning before going to Aveiro, we had breakfast in a bakery not far from our hotel. (I am not sure whether I have already mentioned it, but our hotel in Porto has a very central location, and there are a lot of eateries nearby, within easy walking distance.) Pastelaria e Confeitaria Moura was recommended for its jesuítas (described as “triangles of puff pastry topped with a layer of sugary icing”). We tried this and a few other pastries; everything was good!

Their jesuitas are clearly their most famous product; it is featured on the cover of their menu.

Not knowing the names of anything, we made our selections at the pastry display. We also ordered a coffee and a hot chocolate. (I tried hot chocolate in a few eateries in Portugal, and none of them were good. The Portuguese seem to like a mild chocolate flavour…)

Basically things are rather cheap in Portugal. Some pastries cost around a euro, a little higher or lower. I won’t dig out the prices because I think it’s more effort than it’s worth.

The round one was called a “drum”, as I saw on the receipt after paying. We had taken a small one; there was a regular-sized one too. The jesuitas also had big and small sizes, and we took the big one since it was famous. 

The puff pastry seemed to contain some kind of fruit; you can see a jelly-like strand poking out of the half-eaten piece.

All the pastries tasted good, but our (or my?) favourite was the drum.

We were taking the bus from Porto to Lisbon early in the morning, so the day before leaving, we went back to this shop to buy some pastries for breakfast the next morning.

the take-away box

This time we took a big drum and a small jesuita. We also tried one new item, but I have forgotten what it was like. :P 

After our huge lunch in Aveiro, we didn’t feel that we could eat much for dinner, so we shared a kebab box from a nearby kebab shop. The shop is really close by…we just go out and turn the corner of the building, and there it is! So I went out and bought it back to the hotel; I didn’t even bother swapping my slippers for walking shoes.

The kebab was quite good, but cannot compare to what I had in France or Germany. The downside was that it didn’t come with any salad, only fries. (Note: The first night, we had actually tried another kebab shop (corner shop on the same street), but it wasn’t good at all.) 

And did I mention? All the food in Portugal is on the salty side. (except pastries :P )