Food Tours · Tour

Four Hours That Replace Lunch and Dinner

The operator's own instruction is to arrive extremely hungry, and they mean it: this walk is built to stand in for the two main meals of the day rather than to sample around them. Four hours, starting in front of Santo Ildefonso at Praça da Batalha, the church whose entire facade is covered in blue azulejos. Your guide wears an ID card and begins with the history before any food arrives. The route works up Rua de Santa Catarina, the shopping street with the old cafés and bakeries along it, then into places off it that the guide describes as loved locally rather than found easily. There is a traditional café for pastries and snacks, a restaurant for full classic dishes, and a lesser-known spot for regional specialties, before the walk comes back through the Aliados and the streets around it. Most of the talking is about why Portuguese food looks the way it does, and the recurring subject is bacalhau. Portugal has no cod in its waters and built a national cuisine on it anyway, because fishing fleets sailed to Newfoundland and salting was the only way to bring it home. The country now claims a different recipe for every day of the year, and the guide explains how that happened. All the food is included, along with the drinks on the set menu; anything extra you buy yourself. Up to fifteen travellers, guided in Portuguese or English. Wheelchair accessible throughout. It starts and ends at the same square.