Local Dishes

1. bacalhau à Brás

   Salt cod with shoestring potatoes and egg

   Usage

   Portugal. Born in Lisbon's Bairro Alto: shredded salt cod bound with egg and shoestring potatoes, topped with olives and parsley. Menus sometimes spell it "à Braz"

   Grammar Note

   "Bacalhau" is masculine. The "à" in dish names is a + a contracted, short for "à moda de" (in the style of) — the same pattern as à lagareiro and à portuguesa

2. pastel de nata

   Portuguese custard tart

   Usage

   Portugal, of conventual origin. Eaten dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar. "Pastel de Belém" is a trademark of the Fábrica dos Pastéis de Belém in Lisbon; everywhere else it is a pastel de nata

   Grammar Note

   Masculine. The plural is "pastéis de nata"; two of them is "dois pastéis de nata"

3. caldo verde

   Kale and potato soup

   Usage

   From northern Portugal but served nationwide: potato soup with couve-galega kale sliced paper-thin, usually with a slice of chouriço. Served in clay bowls with corn or rye bread

   Grammar Note

   "Caldo" is masculine; "verde" has one form for both genders, so it does not change

4. francesinha

   Porto's layered sandwich under melted cheese

   Usage

   Porto's own. Ham, sausages and steak between bread, blanketed in melted cheese and flooded with a hot tomato-and-beer sauce, with chips on the side. With a fried egg on top it is an "especial". Created in the 1950s as a take on the croque-monsieur

   Grammar Note

   Feminine. From "francesa" (French, fem.) plus the diminutive -inha

5. bifana

   Pork sandwich

   Usage

   Portugal, said to have started in Vendas Novas. Thin pork cooked with garlic and wine, served in warm bread. A fixture of cafés, tascas and festival stalls; add mustard or hot sauce

   Grammar Note

   Feminine: "Uma bifana, por favor" — one bifana, please

6. sardinha assada

   Grilled sardine

   Usage

   Portugal. Salted the day before and grilled slowly over embers, never over flame. Served with grilled peppers and boiled potatoes, eaten off a thick slice of bread that soaks up the fat. Central to the June Santos Populares; the shared meal is a "sardinhada"

   Grammar Note

   Feminine. Adjectives follow the noun and agree with it: plural "sardinhas assadas"

7. arroz de marisco

   Soupy seafood rice

   Usage

   Portugal, originally from Vieira de Leiria in Marinha Grande. Rice cooked in the broth of prawns, clams, crab and mussels, finished with coriander; the Vieira version is served soupy in a clay pot. Voted one of the country's seven gastronomic wonders

   Grammar Note

   "Arroz" is masculine. "Arroz de X" names the rice by what is in it — arroz de pato (duck), arroz de tamboril (monkfish)

8. cozido à portuguesa

   Portuguese boiled meat and vegetable stew

   Usage

   Portugal. Beef, pork (ear and knuckle included) and chicken boiled about four hours with cabbage, carrot, turnip, potato and beans, plus chouriço, farinheira and morcela sausages. The mix varies by region and the portions are enormous

   Grammar Note

   "Cozido" is masculine, yet "portuguesa" is feminine because it agrees with the omitted "moda" (fashion, fem.) in "à moda portuguesa"

9. polvo à lagareiro

   Octopus roasted in olive oil

   Usage

   Portugal. Boiled octopus, then grilled or oven-roasted and doused in hot olive oil, with garlic, coriander, olives and "batatas a murro" — potatoes smashed with a fist

   Grammar Note

   "Polvo" is masculine. The name — in the olive-presser's style — refers to how much oil is poured over it

10. açorda à alentejana

    Alentejo garlic and coriander bread soup

    Usage

    From the Alentejo. Garlic, salt and olive oil are pounded in the bowl, boiling water poured over, then bread and coriander (or pennyroyal) steeped in it — often with a poached egg, fish or salt cod. It is assembled in the bowl, not cooked. The name comes from Arabic ath-thorda

    Grammar Note

    "Açorda" is feminine, hence "à alentejana". Menus often shorten it to just "açorda"

11. alheira

    Bread-and-poultry sausage

    Usage

    From Trás-os-Montes in northern Portugal: a sausage of poultry rather than pork, mixed with bread, olive oil, lard, garlic and paprika. Three versions — Mirandela, Barroso-Montalegre and Vinhais — hold EU IGP protection. Usually fried and served with a fried egg and potatoes

    Grammar Note

    Feminine. The protected Mirandela version is labelled "alheira de Mirandela"

12. tripas à moda do Porto

    Porto-style tripe with white beans

    Usage

    Porto. Tripe stewed with assorted meats, sausages and white beans; also called "dobrada à moda do Porto". Legend has it the city gave its good meat to the 1415 Ceuta fleet and kept only the offal — which is why people from Porto still call themselves "tripeiros"

    Grammar Note

    "Tripas" is a feminine plural. The city name takes the article "o Porto", so "de + o" contracts to "do Porto"

13. leitão da Bairrada

    Bairrada roast suckling pig

    Usage

    Central Portugal's Bairrada. A whole suckling pig roasted until the skin crackles. Mealhada is the heartland, its roadside houses given over to it; it is also sold in bread rolls to travellers. The oldest surviving recipe is a 1743 convent manuscript

    Grammar Note

    "Leitão" (suckling pig) is masculine, plural "leitões". Menus may write it "leitão assado à Bairrada"

14. pastel de bacalhau

    Salt cod fritter

    Usage

    ⚠ The same name gives you two different things. In central and southern Portugal it is a fried croquette of salt cod, potato, onion, parsley and egg — the north calls that a "bolinho de bacalhau". ⚠ In Brazil a "pastel de bacalhau" is a thin fried turnover filled with cod

    Grammar Note

    Masculine, plural "pastéis de bacalhau". The northern "bolinho" is masculine too, plural "bolinhos"

15. arroz-doce

    Rice pudding

    Usage

    A standard Portuguese dessert: rice cooked with milk, sugar, lemon peel and cinnamon, the Portuguese version enriched with egg yolk. Served cold with a cinnamon pattern dusted on top

    Grammar Note

    Masculine. Arroz-doce has the plural arrozes-doces; menus often omit the hyphen as arroz doce.

16. feijoada

    Bean and meat stew

    Usage

    Brazil. Black beans stewed with many cuts of pork and beef; a "feijoada completa" arrives with white rice, sautéed collard greens, farofa and orange slices. ⚠ Portugal's feijoada is a different dish — white beans in the north-west, red beans in the north-east

    Grammar Note

    Feminine, derived from "feijão" (bean). The Brazilian version appears as "feijoada à brasileira" in an 1827 Pernambuco newspaper advertisement

17. pão de queijo

    Cheese bread balls

    Usage

    Brazil, from Minas Gerais and now everywhere. Made from polvilho (cassava starch), eggs, cheese, oil and salt — no wheat flour at all. Eaten at breakfast or with coffee

    Grammar Note

    Masculine, plural "pães de queijo"

18. coxinha

    Fried chicken croquette

    Usage

    Brazil, a São Paulo "salgado" from the 19th century. Dough of wheat flour and chicken broth wrapped around shredded chicken, cheese or calabresa sausage, shaped like a chicken thigh, breaded and deep-fried

    Grammar Note

    Feminine: "coxa" (thigh) plus the diminutive -inha — the shape is the name

19. moqueca

    Brazilian fish stew

    Usage

    Brazil, a coastal dish of Pará, Bahia and Espírito Santo, cooked in clay pots. ⚠ Two schools: the Bahian one uses dendê palm oil and bell pepper and usually coconut milk; the capixaba one from Espírito Santo uses none of those, taking olive oil and urucum for colour instead

    Grammar Note

    Feminine, also spelled "muqueca". From Kimbundu mu'keka (fish stew) or Tupi pokeka (to wrap)

20. acarajé

    Black-eyed pea fritter

    Usage

    Bahia, above all the streets of Salvador. A patty of ground black-eyed peas, onion and salt fried in dendê palm oil, then split and filled with vatapá, caruru and dried shrimp

    Grammar Note

    Masculine. The same dish as West African akara — kosai in northern Nigeria, koose in Ghana

21. churrasco

    Brazilian barbecue

    Usage

    Brazil. Meat over charcoal or wood — large skewers in the south, grills elsewhere. The famous cut is picanha (rump cap); also costela, maminha, fraldinha, alcatra and contrafilé, alongside pork, lamb, chicken and sausages

    Grammar Note

    Masculine. The grill itself is a "churrasqueira" (fem.); a restaurant serving it is a "churrascaria"

22. farofa

    Toasted cassava flour

    Usage

    Brazil. Cassava (or corn) flour toasted in fat or butter — not a dish on its own but the thing you spoon over grilled meat, chicken, fish or feijoada. Bahia makes it with dendê oil. From Kimbundu "falofa"

    Grammar Note

    Feminine. Sold ready-made in packets, but most families have their own recipe

23. açaí na tigela

    Açaí bowl

    Usage

    Brazil. Açaí pulp, from the Amazon floodplains of Pará, served in a bowl. In the cities it is the sweet frozen cream with granola and banana, big in Rio, Espírito Santo and along the north-east coast. ⚠ In Pará itself the traditional version is savoury — a pirão mixed with cassava flour, not sweetened

    Grammar Note

    "Açaí" is masculine and "tigela" feminine; "na" is em + a contracted

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