Portugal
Salt cod cooked a hundred ways, Atlantic fish straight off the boat, and a custard tart worth crossing town for.
The smell reaches you first — sardines charring over coals on a Lisbon side street, split and salted, eaten off a slab of bread that soaks up the oil. Portugal cooks facing the Atlantic, and it shows: the fish is so fresh it wants little more than salt, a hot grill and a wedge of lemon, and the whole country happily eats it standing in the sun.
At the centre of everything sits bacalhau, the salt cod they swear to cook a different way for every day of the year — flaked through potato and egg, baked under cream, fried into golden fritters. Around it is the rest of the larder: peppery olive oil, coriander by the fistful, the piri-piri chilli carried home from the old empire, and the custard tart, pastel de nata, its pastry shattering under a scorched-sugar top, best eaten warm before you leave the counter. Wash it down with a faintly fizzy vinho verde or a small glass of port, and you’ll be plotting the next meal before the plates are cleared.
- bacalhau (salt cod done countless ways)
- grilled sardines
- pastéis de nata (custard tarts)
- caldo verde (kale & sausage soup)
- francesinha (Porto meat sandwich)
- piri-piri chicken