Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat a pastel de nata
A flaky pastry shell of custard baked at very high heat until the top blisters and blackens. Eaten warm, with cinnamon and icing sugar if you want them.
The blisters are required: an evenly yellow nata is underbaked. Eat it the same day and preferably within hours; the pastry loses its crunch fast.
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Try bacalhau
Salt cod, soaked and cooked one of a hundred ways: à brás with shoestring potato and egg, com natas with cream, à Gomes de Sá with potato and olives.
À brás is the gentlest first version: soft and not salty. Fresh cod is barely eaten here; the point is the cured fish.
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Eat a bifana
Thin slices of pork stewed in garlic, white wine and paprika, in a soft roll. A counter sandwich eaten standing, with mustard and a beer.
Ask for mustard and piri-piri sauce; that is how locals take it. The roll is dipped into the same liquid the pork cooked in.
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Eat sardines in season
Whole sardines salted and grilled over coals, served on a slice of bread that soaks up the oil. The season runs June to September; in winter they are lean and dull.
The bread under the fish is part of the dish rather than a side, and it is eaten last. In June, during the Saint Anthony festival, they are grilled in the streets of Alfama.
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Try ameijoas à Bulhão Pato
Clams cooked in olive oil with garlic, coriander and lemon and served in their own juices. The sauce is mopped with bread, and that is the point.
Coriander is essential; the Portuguese are among the few in Europe who use it seriously. Every shell should be open, and closed ones are not eaten.
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Try caldo verde
A potato purée soup with finely shredded cabbage and a slice of smoked chouriço. Plain, green and served with broa cornbread.
The cabbage is cut into hair-thin ribbons, which gives the texture. It comes in an earthenware bowl and often precedes sardines.
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Try polvo à lagareiro
Octopus boiled tender and roasted with smashed potatoes under a generous flood of olive oil and garlic. The oil is meant to be abundant; that is what lagareiro means.
The potatoes are smashed with a fist rather than sliced so they drink the oil. The octopus should give way to a fork without effort.
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Try caracóis in summer
Small snails simmered in a broth with oregano and garlic, eaten with a toothpick alongside beer. Strictly seasonal: they appear in May and vanish by August.
A sign saying Há caracóis on the door means the season is open. These are not Burgundy snails: they are tiny and served in broth rather than butter.
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Try francesinha
A layered sandwich of meats and sausages under melted cheese, drowned in a spicy beer sauce, with an egg and chips. A northern dish, Porto by origin.
The sauce is the dish, and every kitchen guards its own recipe. The portion is enormous and splitting one is entirely normal.
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Order petiscos
Portuguese small plates for the middle of the table: sausage flamed at the table, serra cheese, braised offal, tinned tuna, pickled lupini beans. The evening format rather than a prelude.
Tinned fish here is gastronomy rather than thrift: good tinned sardines cost more than fresh. Lupini come in brine and are squeezed out of their skins.
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Try travesseiros and convent sweets Desserts and pastries
Convent sweets built on egg yolks and sugar: the almond-filled travesseiro, ovos moles, papos de anjo. They appeared when convents were left with yolks after using whites to starch linen.
The sweetness is deliberate; take a small piece with black coffee. The travesseiros of Sintra are the benchmark.
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Try a bola de Berlim Desserts and pastries
A doughnut split and filled with yellow custard in front of you. A beach classic: in summer sellers carry them across the sand in cool bags.
The custard should be yolk-yellow and dense rather than pale confectioner's cream. On the beach they are sold with a shout of bolas de Berlim, and that is part of summer.
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Try Serra da Estrela cheese Desserts and pastries
A sheep's cheese set with thistle rather than rennet, so soft that a ripe wheel is opened at the top and eaten with a spoon. The season runs from winter into spring.
A ripe wheel runs, which is correct rather than spoiled. It is eaten with broa cornbread and red wine rather than as a dessert.
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Drink a galão or a bica Non-alcoholic drinks
A bica is an espresso; a galão is coffee with milk in a tall glass. Drunk standing at the counter, where it costs noticeably less than at a table.
Ask for um café and you get an espresso; the words are synonymous here. A meia de leite is the same as a galão but in a cup.
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Try ginjinha Local alcohol
A sour cherry liqueur poured from the barrel into small glasses and drunk standing at a hatch. You are asked com elas or sem elas: with or without the berries.
The classic shops are the size of a cupboard and open from morning in the centre. You eat the berry at the bottom last; it is soaked in the liqueur.
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Drink vinho verde Local alcohol
A young wine from the north-west: light, high in acid, faintly spritzy and low in alcohol. The natural partner to sardines and seafood in the heat.
Serve it very cold, poured into small glasses. Red vinho verde exists and is also served chilled; it is a local oddity worth trying.
