Eating the Algarve 2023

A Complete 2022 Re-write and Update of the 2011 Post of the Same Name with Many Additions and Improvements from 2023

Introduction

Portugal

For me food ranks high among the pleasures of travel. Eating local may involve endless mutton in Mongolia (there is no choice) or two kebabs a day in Iran (I hear menus have diversified since 2000) but also the multifarious delights of Thailand, China, Vietnam, India, Malaysia (this list could be much longer) and, closer to home, Portugal.

We first visited the Algarve, Portugal’s southernmost region, in 1982, returned several times in the 1990s and have not missed a year this century (except 2020, the Baleful Year of Covid). I admire the way the locals accept that, for a part of the year at least, they are a minority in their own town, yet deal calmly and honestly with the invading hordes. I love the October warmth, the sunshine sparkling on the sea, the colours of the bougainvillea trailing across freshly painted white villas, but most of all I love the food.

The Algarve (Carvoeiro underlined) and its position in the Iberian Peninsula (shaded red in inset)

Portugal is often thought of as a Mediterranean country. Portuguese is a Latin language, the climate, particularly in the Algarve is Mediterranean as is the food. Tomatoes, garlic and peppers are important while olive oil is the essential cooking medium, condiment and salad dressing. All it lacks is a Mediterranean coast.

Warm and blue, but definitely the Atlantic Ocean, not the Mediterranean Sea

The Algarve is a tourist region and thus prey to foreign influences - tapas and sangria from Spain, salmon from northern Europe and (2022’s fashion) ceviche from South America. Carvoeiro, our Algarve base for the last 18 years, also offers Chinese, Indian, Thai and Nepalese cuisine – and all-day English Breakfast should that be the limit of your horizons. There are an increasing number of tapas, Italian and ‘Mediterranean’ restaurants, but the majority could still be described as tipico, where fresh, local ingredients are treated with respect.

Carvoeiro

I have nothing against Indian restaurants or ceviche, but this post is about Portuguese food, mostly with a distinct Algarve accent. It is not fine dining (though the Algarve has its Michelin starred restaurants), nor exclusively about restaurant food, it is about good food at everyday prices – something Portugal does supremely well.

Breakfast

We do not go out for breakfast, and there is nothing special about a Portuguese breakfast, but I must crowbar in a mention of presunto. Portuguese has two words for ham, fiambre is wet cured ham, pink, flaccid and forgettable while presunto is air cured – very like the Spanish Serrano Ham. Of the many ways to enjoy presunto, none is better than smeared with a warm, runny egg-yolk.

Presunto, a sadly broken fried egg and an over-large breakfast

Although we eat presunto for breakfast regularly, this is not a regular breakfast, this is the final day, 'clear the fridge' breakfast - well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Morning Snacks

Coffee and cake! A section of I Don’t have a Sweet Tooth but… is dedicated to Portuguese coffee and cake. I shall not repeat myself here, but I cannot resist a picture of coffee with a pastel de nata, my absolute favourite.

Cafe con leite and a pastel de nata

It does not look much, but melts away leaving a legacy of lovely, lingering flavours. It’s like Portugal, not always showy but full of depth and richness.

Light Lunch

As will become obvious in the 'main courses' section, we do occasionally go out for lunch, but not for a 'light lunch' - keeping it 'light' would be nigh on impossible. But to control a regime noticeably leaning towards over-indulgence, light lunches are a necessity. We need salad - lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, a sprinkle of herbs, a dash of vinegar and a drizzle (or downpour) of olive oil - and in the Algarve what better accompaniment than sardine paté.

Salad and sardine paté

Or a few slices of chouriço…

Chouriço Piquante da Beira (spicy sausage from the Beira region)

…or maybe some cheese, though cheese is often eaten at the start of a meal. Portuguese cheeses can look similar, most are semi-hard but some are mild and some are not. Cow, goat and sheep milk are used and generate a spectrum of cheesy flavours. The biggest problem is to know what you are buying. Most comes from Alentejo, the next district to the north or from the Azores, 1,000km out in the Atlantic.

Two cheeses

On the left is an Alentejo sheep cheese. It is close textured with a gentle flavour, but a pleasing tang in the finish. On the right an Azores cheese made with mixed cow, goat and sheep milk – I don’t know of anywhere else that mixes milks. It is soft and creamy with a delicate flavour but a sumptuous texture.

Main Courses

Fish and Other Denizens of the Deep

Some 100km West to East and 50km North to South, the Algarve is a roughly rectangular with the Atlantic Ocean on two sides. Unsurprisingly, it is blessed with the freshest of fish.

Dourada e Robalo. Sea Bream and Sea Bass are ubiquitous. The tourist-driven fashion of late is to fillet them, but they used to be plated whole....

Robalo, Casa Palmeira, Carvoeiro 2023

....and still are at Casa Palmeira in Carvoeiro.

Dourado, Casa Palmeira, Carvoeiro 2023

...while at the Restaurante Atlântida on the beach at Alvor, Lynne’s Dourada was filleted at the table by the waiter.

Dourada, Restaurante Atlântida, Alvor 2022

Sardinha. Sardines are available in (almost) every restaurant in the Algarve and are often the cheapest main course.

Since 1982 we have been making what has become a pilgrimage to the Algarve’s second city of Portimão to eat sardines. The scruffy trestle tables on the dock have long been tidied up, but ducking under an arch from where they used to be brings you to a small square where Dona Barca, an old-style restaurant with communal tables, grills fish in the open air. Since we discovered it with Brian and Hilary in 2001(ish) we have never felt the need to go anywhere else for our sardines.

Dona Barca 2022, with Brian and Hilary
Sardines, salad and boiled potatoes, so simple, so satisfying

It is a treat we have often shared with friends, usually Brian and Hilary. Dona Barca is inexpensive, the food is excellent (they have a full menu, it’s not just sardines) and it is one of very few restaurants we visit with as many Portuguese customers as tourists. Sadly, the long communal tables disappeared two years ago – more victims of Covid?

Espadarte. I like an occasional swordfish steak. At lunch at the Atlântida they offered an Espadarte Algarvia. There is no agreed definition of ‘Algarvia’ or ‘Algarve style’ but I expected something with tomatoes, peppers and garlic. What I got was different.

Swordfish with orange and almonds, Restaurante Atlântida, Alvor 2022

Oranges and almonds are important local products, but I was not prepared for a slab of fish to be doused in orange (juice and pulp) and sprinkled with toasted almonds. ‘Oranges and fish!' I thought, 'No! No! Thrice No!’ But, believe it or not, it was the best thing I ate all week. Like Lister’s triple fried egg, chilli, chutney sandwich it was all wrong, but perfect.

Perhaps there is a fashion growing here. This year (2023) I found a restaurant offering 'swordfish with coconut and passion fruit'. After discovering the pleasures of fish and passion fruit in Madeira earlier this year I thought I might try it, then I read the restaurant reviews and decided not to bother.

We lunched at the Atlântida at the suggestion of my (distant) cousin Ricky, long- time Algarve resident, fluent Portuguese speaker and now a Portuguese citizen. See Finding a Long Lost Cousin.

Ricky and me, Restaurante Atlântida, Alvor

Lula. Squid has long been a favourite of both of us. They were disappearing from menus a couple of years ago, but I am glad to see they are now making a strong recovery. This year’s squid (a portion of three) was, like, last year's eaten at the Bela Rosa in Carvoeiro.

Squid at the Bela Rosa, Carvoeiro, 2022

Perfecting squid is tricky. I am of the opinion that the very finest squid was served at Maria's, a breath of fresh air, proper Portugal and sensible pricing on the beach beyond Vale de Lobo/Quinta da Largo. After several decades of sterling service Maria sold up. The restaurant is still there, I believe the name is unchanged, but the new management is fully invested in the creeping Californication of the Algarve.

Lynne and a squid, Maria's, Quinta do Largo, 2011
Fish is always best eaten within sight of the sea

Polvo. We often ate  Octopus, more precisely, Polvo à lagareiro in Martins Grill in Carvoeiro, Sadly Jan (Martins) Zegers died some months before this photograph was taken and Martins's Grill is no more.

Polvo à lagareiro, Martin's Grill Carvoeiro 2019

Lagareiro is a style of cooking often applied to octopus, cod and more in which the grilled or roasted fish is brushed with olive oil.

Bacalhau. The Portuguese love affair with salt cod dates from the days before refrigeration. It was once the people’s major source of protein and there were, allegedly, 365 ways of cooking it, so it could be eaten every day. It remains popular, and has started to appear more often in tourist orientated restaurants. Sadly, Lynne was not delighted by her Bacalhau à Braga, the fish, she thought, was a little overcooked.

Lynne and Bacalhua à Braga, 2022

Arroz de Marisco. Seafood rice usually comes as a dish for two. A large earthenware bowl is placed on the table and, after the waiter has given it a judicious stir, you spoon out the contents, rice, langoustine, crabs, prawns, mussels and anything else that might have been in the market that day. Fingers are required to liberate tasty morsels from shells and it all gets wonderfully messy (bibs are normally provided).

Arroz con Marisco, Casa Palmeira, Carvoeiro, 2023

In 2022 we tried out the Marisqueira Portugal in Carvoeiro. It is, I think, new and is trying to be a touch more elegant and inventive than the opposition.

Marisqueira Portugal, Carvoeiro

They fiddled with a classic, the broth was not the usual tomato-based delight, apart from the clams and mussels the seafood was served separately and they used short-grained rice instead of long. They almost got away with it, the flavours were good, the crab legs were very fine indeed – and they helpfully provided crackers to provide easy access to the sweetest of meat in the spindly legs – but if you mess with a classic, you really have to nail it, not just be a bit different.

Lynne and a langoustine, Marisqueira Portugese, Carvoeiro

Ensopado de Enguia.The restaurants we use in Carvoeiro and along the coastal strip describe themselves as 'tipico' but their clientele is largely tourists and however tipico they want to be, they all have an eye on what will appeal to the north European palate.

This year (2023) my cousin Ricky (see above) took us to the restaurant in her village. She told us they feed local workers on weekday lunchtime and on Sundays (when we visited) people drive up from Portimão (the nearby city) for country food. Wherever the clientele came from they were overwhelmingly Portuguese

A Oficina, Mexilhoeira Grande

A Oficina gave us access to several dishes that do not make it onto the tourist menus and I could not resist trying ensopado de enguia, eel stew. Disks of perfectly cooked eel floated in a somewhat rustic sauce consisting largely of blitzed tomatoes strongly flavoured with coriander. It was accompanied by a plate of chips and fried bread, which would have been perfect if I spent my day labouring in the fields, but for an idle so-and-so like me, was more carbohydrate than I needed. The eel, though was delicious, the white, delicately flavoured flesh falling willingly from the spine.,

Eel stew, A Oficina, Mexilhoeira Grande, 2023

Amêijoas. Clams have always been important in Portugal but the last twenty years have seen serious over-fishing. Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato, clams in a garlicky broth, was once a cheap starter, it still appears on menus but now costs more than most main courses.

You can still find a bag of fresh clams at a reasonable price in a supermarket and cook them at home.

The former contents of a bag of clams

I have never essayed Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato, but I borrow from the French and do Amêijoas marinière (to mix languages and mess with a classic!). Using a big pot, I soften up some onion and plenty of garlic in olive oil, pour in a bottle or so of white wine and add salt and pepper and a handful of herbs. Using a quality wine is a waste, but I found this in the same supermarket…

Cheap wine!

… a tetra-brick of white wine from Badajoz across the border in Spain. It cost €0.95, was barely drinkable but perfect for clams.

Let the wine boil a little, throw in the clams, give them a shake and job is done.

Clams marinière frites
I messed with a classic, but I only had to please my resident food critic and she had no complaint.

A cataplana is a cooking vessel unique to the Algarve. It consists of a pair of hinged copper shells which enclose the ingredients sealing in all the moisture and all the flavour. It can also be put on the heat either way up. A fish cataplana, usually serving two, will contain several pieces of fish - whatever is available that day - and, typically, prawns and mussels. The smell when your cataplana is opened at the table is memorable.

Cataplana, Vimar, Carvoeiro 2011

The cataplana in the picture was expertly cooked, but among the fish is a slab of Scottish farmed salmon, and in front are New Zealand green-lipped mussels. Local produce is excellent and promoting it is even more important now than it was in 2011.

Another dish traditionally cooked in a cataplana is pork and clams, and in 2022 I enjoyed them in an individual cataplana at the Casa Algarvia in Carvoeiro. This apparently strange combination was made in the Algarve, but undoubtedly designed in heaven.

Pork and clams in a cataplana, Casa Algarvia, Carvoeiro. 2022

As that last cataplana involved pork, it is time for the meat.

Meat

Borrego. Throughout the Algarve there are patches of scrubby land with a few sheep and a shepherd. The shepherds are uniformly the sort of old men who feel they still need to do something useful (an affliction I have never suffered from). Lynne felt that as they went to so much effort it was rude not to eat some lamb.

Lynne’s rack of lamb at the Casa Algarvia was top quality meat, perfectly cooked. It was marred, though, by a squirt of commercial mint sauce at the side of the plate, partly over some salad. I suspect unimaginative British tourists have for years been telling Portuguese restaurateurs that ‘we always eat lamb with mint sauce’ and this is the result. Mint sauce has its place in a British-style ‘roast dinner’, but it is just inappropriate here.

Rack of lamb, Casa Algarvia, Carvoeiro, 2022

Frango Piri-piri. Chicken piri-piri was on (almost) every menu in the Algarve long before Nando’s existed. That abomination was co-founded in South Africa by Fernando Duarte, a Portuguese Mozambiquan who gave the dish the fast-food franchise treatment and aligned himself with the other gastro-criminals of KFC, MacDonalds and the rest. There are mercifully very few fast-food franchises in Portugal (though there is a Burger King with a ludicrously large sign in Lagoa) and chicken piri-piri is cooked individually by each restaurant in their own style. It is traditionally our lunch on our last day in Portugal.

Chicken piri-piri, O Barco, Carvoeiro 2022

Portugal and the chilli: a small digression

The chilli pepper was first cultivated in Mexico some 10,000 years ago. Several millennia later It was taken to Asia by Portuguese traders, arriving in India in the late 16th century and recasting the whole cuisine of south-east Asian. Vindaloo, the ultimate test of British diner's machismo, originated in the Portugal's Indian colony of Goa, as an example Portuguese/Indian fusion.

They took the variety that would become piri-piri to Africa and it made its way to the Portuguese mainland from their colony of Mozambique. Chilli does not appear in traditional Portuguese cookery but sausages (chouriço piquante) and sardine paté with piri-piri are widely available, as is piri-piri sauce, suggesting it is much used in home cookery.

Desserts

Dessert menus usually involve a large glossy folded card produced by a manufacturer of synthetic desserts and ice creams. Stuck somewhere on the card there will always be a small, sometimes hand-written, list of the grown-up desserts, many of them made in-house. Ever present is pudim flan, a rich eggy caramel custard, which is perfect when you have too little room for anything heavier. Sometimes it is just perfect.

Lynne and a pudim flan, Martin's Grill, Carvoeiro 2019

If you have a little more space left, there are bolos (cakes) and tartes (translation unnecessary) made from local produce including (but not limited to) almonds, figs…

Fig and almond roll, Atlântida, Alvor, 2022

… carobs, oranges…

An amazingly light yet full flavoured orange cake, and an affogato of sorts
O Barco, Carvoeira, 2022

and apples. The cakes are usually made with one egg more than would be normal elsewhere and are universally wonderful.

And there is always the mysterious little package known as Dom Rodrigo.

Dom Rodrigo, Marisqueirra Portugal, Carvoeiro, 2022
Very enjoyable, but rather small once you get in there

Extroduction

I have omitted nibbles and starters, and the mandatory eating of olives that precedes every meal, but I have already gone on too long and should stop now.

Bread, olives and white port - well why not?

*This is not an exhaustive list, I could have mention France, Italy, Laos, Moldova, Albania and many others.

Algarve Posts

1: The Algarve: Delights and Depredations(2010)
2: The Algarve: Random Delights (2012)
3: Mexilhoeira Grande and a Long Lost Cousin (2013)
4: The West Coast (2013)
5: Lagos (2014)
6: Castro Marim and Vila Real do Santo António (2015)
7: The Boxes of Carvoeiro (2016)
8: Mertola and Alcoutim: Strongholds by the Guadiana River (2017) - Also under Alentejo
9: Silves, Former Capital of the Algarve (2018)
10: Eating the Algarve (2022)
11: Drinking the Algarve (2022)