Food Tours · Tour

Ten Tastings, and Half a Francesinha if You Take the Long One

Ten tastings and three drinks in three hours, with ten people at most and guides who were born in Porto. Book the four-hour version instead and a meal gets added: half a francesinha and half a chicken piri-piri. The francesinha is the dish Porto is defined by and the one visitors are least prepared for. Bread, steak, sausage, ham and linguiça, sealed under melted cheese and flooded with a beer and tomato sauce that every house guards the recipe for, usually with a fried egg and chips. Half of one is the correct portion for a food tour and a full one is a commitment. The walk starts on Rua Alexandre Herculano and takes in the Bolhão market, which reopened after a long renovation and still runs on the same vendors and the same families. You meet them, see what comes in fresh, and taste as you go. Port wine is included, and so is ginjinha, the sour-cherry liqueur poured in small glasses and drunk standing up. The guide connects the food to the households it came from, which is what the tour is actually selling: the tastings are in places that do not appear in guidebooks and would not be obvious from outside. Up to ten travellers, in English, minimum two people. Check in fifteen minutes early. It runs in any weather. Children from one to three go free and four to fourteen at half price, if declared at booking. On Sundays the market is closed and the stop moves to local taverns instead. Dietary adjustments are possible by message, but the tour is not recommended for gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan diets, or for pregnant travellers given the amount of alcohol.