Hands up if you love trying new drinks and dishes when you travel to a new city 🙋♀️ If you’re like me and love getting stuck into another country’s culture via your tastebuds and your belly then you’re in the right place! Over the last few years it’s something that I’ve been doing more and more of as I’ve become more adventurous with food and love to learn about the dishes that are significant to different places. This post is all about the wonderful Portuguese city of Porto, located on the country’s northern coast. There are some classic foods from Portugal you’ve got to taste as well as some that are very specific to Porto and of course some iconic drinks.
🔖 Make sure you share this with your travel buddy and that you’ve got plenty of time to satisfy your palate while visiting Porto. I particularly enjoy a good food tour and we jumped onto one for an evening we had in the city. I’d recommend doing this as soon as possible to get a feel for Porto and to learn from your foodie guide for the rest of your time.
Top Tip – Booking Activities & Tours
My favourite app for booking tours, adventures and plenty of fun is Get Your Guide. There are so many epic memories that you can choose to make from food tours to entry tickets, laidback wine tasting to adrenaline filled adventures. Make sure you use my discount code CATTHOMSON5 for 5% off your first booking when you download the app as a new user 👇
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1. Pastel de Nata
You cannot visit anywhere in Portugal without having at least three pastel de natas daily. I’m not kidding. And when you taste your first one you’ll understand why. Pastel de nata are sweet treats in the form of a custard tart. The pastry is flakey, crispy and with a hint of cinnamon and its filled with a delicious egg custard filling which is ideally, recently fresh out the oven and warm (not molten). In 2024, they were around €1-€1.50 each depending on where you go. We tasted pastel de nata from two specialists, Castro (📌 – Google Maps) and Fábrica da Nata (📌 – Google Maps). We were also recommended Manteigaria (📌 – Google Maps) by our food tour guide so that’s another to add to your tasting itinerary 😉
2. Port Wine
In the same way that champagne comes from a protected region in France, port comes from a protected region in Portugal. The region just so happens to be on the Douro river so historically all of the port would be stored in Porto before being exported, and still is to this day. I say stored in Porto but on the south side of the river, there is actually a second city called Vila Nova de Gaia and the port cellars are all located here. This is due to the lower levels of solar exposure on the southern side of the river which keeps the port fresher. In Porto you’ll discover that port does not just come in the ruby format but also tawny, white, sweet, dry, vintage, late bottled, reserve…
Join a port tour to discover more about the process of port production, the different varieties and of course to taste your way through some samples. We loved the port tasting at Quevedo which was just the two of us and each port paired with cheese. After you’ve completed a more official tasting at a port lodge, you’ll find plenty of local bars with considerably more casual but also very decently priced tastings.
3. Francesinha
You’ve not had a proper sandwich until you’ve had a Francesinha. Invented in Porto, this Portuguese sandwich is the city’s most iconic dish and you must taste one before you leave. It’s a very indulgent, very stacked, sandwich which you should probably only have on special occasions 😉 The Francesinha consists of two thick slices of bread with steak, sausage (maybe ham as well) in between and then covered in a melted cheese exterior before being smothered in a slightly spicy, tomatoey sauce. There’s no set recipe and every restaurant, bar, cafe will have variations on the ingredients and ratios so that’s unrepeatable. Everyone and their uncle claims to know where to get the best Francesinha in Porto so there’s no set place to try it, just check Google reviews first! Having said that, we did have two and they were both great so I’m happy to recommend Pregar (📌 – Google Maps) and A Fábrica da Picaria (📌 – Google Maps). It’s said that Francesinha takes an inspiration from the French sandwich, Croque Monsieur, and its name literally translates to Little Frenchie.
4. Bifana
Bifana is another of Porto’s cherished sandwiches but is this time a more simple affair than the Francesinha and this one can be found all over Portugal. A Bifana consists of thinly sliced pork steak which should be marinated for hours and ideally twenty four of them in a spicy, garlicy, juicy sauce. Once it’s been marinated and slow cooked, the pork is served in a soft roll. That’s it. The one we tasted was delicious. So simple yet the flavour was incredible and I wish we’d longer in the city to try it again.
5. Green Wine
You wouldn’t be unreasonable for expecting green wine to be green but it is in actual fact, not. Green wines are actually white and rather the ‘green’ designation comes from the area in Portugal from which this wine comes from, Vinho Verde. They’re marketed as ‘fresh, fruity, floral’ and are generally drunk during the summer as they’re rather easy drinking and just a little fizzy.
Top Tip – Data Roaming
If you’re visiting Porto from overseas then getting online with an eSIM from Holafly is such a game changer. No swapping SIMs. No complicated data roaming. Lots of choice. If your phone is compatible, just download the eSIM and get going!
Holafly
6. Sardines
Since Porto is a coastal city with links out to the Atlantic Ocean, the fishing industry has been a massive slice of business for the city. Sardines are a Portuguese favourite and intertwined with maritime life for many Portuguese families. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the canning industry was established along the coast and business boomed as sardines began to be exported all around the world. Sardine season is generally over the summer when the fish are grilled and eaten fresh. If you visit Porto in summer you can take a trip down to the seaside and taste some fresh grilled sardines. The canned sardines help preserve the food to be eaten later in the year as well as for export purposes and the taste is more in favour of the flavours that the fish was preserved in.
7. Local Cheese
You might not think of Portugal when you think of cheese but it has a surprising number of incredible varieties created from its mixed climates and landscapes. During our short trip to Porto we tried cheese on two occasions, one at a port tasting and one on a food tour. Cheese is often paired with port here as the saltiness of the cheeses contrasts with the sweetness of port wine. A cheese that intrigued me was the goat cheese we tasted at a deli. I know goat cheese to mainly be quite creamy and very strongly flavoured but we tried a Portuguese goat cheese that was harder and very mild, lovely! There are plenty of sheep’s milk cheese varieties to try as well including the most famous, Serra da Estrela. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it was called but we had the most incredible cheese with herbs that was from the Azores. Pop into a deli or visit Mercado do Bolhão to buy some cheese for a picnic or to taste some samples.
8. Coffee
I am a coffee fiend and whenever I visit somewhere new, the first places to get saved on my Google map pins are the top coffee spots I can find. Unfortunately, in Porto, we didn’t have much time to try many coffees and I didn’t fancy getting the jitters so I’ve only got two recommendations for coffee here – Esquires Coffee & Hairy Biker. However, much like many European cities, Porto has its fair share of incredible independent cafes, coffee shops and roasters so if you’re a coffee fan you’ll find plenty of places for an excellent shot of your morning fuel.
9. Brunch at Hungry Biker
This last item on my list is slightly cheeky because it’s a place rather than a specific dish or drink! But I couldn’t really write a foodie post about Porto without mentioning that served such good brunch we went twice. I don’t think I’ve ever done that, much less when I’ve only been somewhere for such a short time that trying to have a variety is important. So you know it must be good. Hungry Biker has two locations in Porto, one called Do Norte and the other Floresta.
They both have such charming decor and a lovely, cosy cabin feel to them and they both have slightly different menus which mean you have an excellent excuse to go to both. I opted to go with my sweet tooth urges and had French Toast with lots of seasonal fruits and a tasty port, orange and honey sauce on brunch one and ricotta pancakes with an espresso cream and again plenty of seasonal fruits. My partner chose the big brunch which had a fresh, colourful plate of brunch goodies such as avo, scrambled eggs and salmon with a side of yoghurt and granola plus included a coffee of your choice. I can’t recommend this place enough 🤤
For more Porto inspiration of what you can get up to on a weekend in the city and some of the best Insta spots then take a look at my other posts 👇
Cat x