Bom dia! as they say in Portugal.  A beautiful country filled with ancient architecture that sing with thousands of years of history as we walked along the cobbled streets.  We were on a river cruise with a group from the Mount Eden Vineyard.   It was an abbreviated river cruise because the Douro River was flooded and the dams were releasing so much water that the ship could not navigate the swift currents safely nor go through the locks so we only cruised about 10 miles (up and back one section of the river).   A small group of us also visited Salamanca, Spain and missed a short cruise down the river and a 115 ft lock.   Salamanca was worth the 4.5 hr bus ride and an absolutely beautiful university city.  If you are ever in northern Spain, it is a MUST stop!   The cathedrals, University and Plaza Mayor is breathtaking, even at night!  But, back to Portugal . . .

We ate our way through Portugal starting with a Michelin 2-star restaurant in Lisbon, Belcanto.    We were told that we should try for lunch since they were booked a month in advance.   We were staying at the Intercontinental Hotel and the concierge, Orlando (he is the reason to stay there too!), called them for us and found that the minute before we called, someone cancelled their dinner reservations!!  What great luck!!  Because I have so many restaurants to share with you, I will not show every single photo of the 15 course dinner but as you can imagine, the dinner was sublime. 

José Avillez was a protégé of Ferran Adría of Barcelona. You may remember in a post from last year I wrote about his liquid olive?   José upped the invention to include a liquid carrot, garlic and olive all presented artfully on rocks or pieces of wood.  The sashimi was nestled in a floral arrangement.  The signature dessert was a frozen version, using tangerine juice; a very light and fabulous ending to our meal.

 We were invited to tour the kitchen and meet Jose Avillez and his kitchen crew.  It reminded me of Manresa’s kitchen.  José was very young, friendly and even took a photo with the other couple we were with.  It’s a small restaurant with only 10 tables so you can imagine how delighted we were to get our “surprise” reservation.  

Orlando also made a reservation for us at  1-star Fortaleza Do Guincho (Fort Guincho), an isolated restaurant about 30 miles outside of Lisbon on the Atlantic coast.  We sat a table with a view of the coastline and enjoyed a late lunch of another 14 courses. . . I’m not sure what makes a 1-star vs a 2-star but it may be that I don’t have the level of sophistication to discern the difference between the star levels.   We enjoyed another feast for both our eyes as well as our palates as you can see from the few photos of this sumptuous lunch.  The theme of the lunch melded with the oceanic views out side our window.  Various courses using octopus, scallops, monkfish, seaweed, kelp  make beautiful presentations.  The photo on the left was monkfish and the one on the right was dessert, arranged to look like a wave.

As you may guess by now, Orlando has become our “go to” guy for dining.  We ate at two other restaurants that had no stars but were just as delicious in comfortable, café environments.  The Tágide Wine & Tapas Bar served small plate of seafoods, wonderful cured meats, bread---I must mention that throughout Portugal, the bread was unforgettable: white, pumpkin, squash, cornbread, mini-baguettes, whole wheat, on and on!   Orlando recommended that we eat at the tapas bar rather than the restaurant if we also wanted a great view and he was correct.  The Lisbon vista to be enjoyed while munching our way through the menu was a panoramic gastronomic adventure not to be missed.

Orlando lastly recommended a place popular among the local Portuguese, Cervesaria Ramiro.  This restaurant only serves shellfish and doesn’t take reservations; thus explaining the long waiting line to get in.  No tourists here!  But Orlando picks up his magical phone,  makes a call and I am told to ignore the line and ask for Ramiro, who shows us to table for 4, all set and waiting for us!  Oh my, if you love shellfish, this is truly the place to devour all kinds of shellfish, including octopus, and prawns so large that they should be called lobsters!   Served with warmed bread, slathered with butter.  OMG, died and gone to heaven.  Sorry, we were
so excited we forgot to take photos. . .

SO, if you ever go to Lisbon, stay at the Intercontinental so you can get the services of Orlando!!

If you are now wondering if we’ve now gained 20 lbs, EACH, I must share that because most of the dishes are seafood oriented, I returned home the same weight as when I left California.  Yes, we ate desserts and tried to keep the bread intake down.  Their desserts tended to be fruit, melons, ices and light.    This example is from the tapas restaurant and used honeydew and fresh ricotta with a snip of thyme.

The meals on the ship were nice but not memorable.  We were on a Uniworld ship, Queen Isabel, supposedly cruising up the Douro River.   We visited and tasted ports from Sandeman, Churchill, Taylor and other port houses but TBH, none compared to the ports from Bill’s cellar.   What we did find surprising was the white and red wines of Portugal.  We thoroughly enjoyed their wines and if we find any in the USA, we’ll share a bottle at one of our dinners.  They have a lovely white wine called vino verde and Alvariñho plus others from grape varieties neither Bill or Jeffrey had heard of.  The red ranged from a cabernet type grape to more of a merlot type variety but again, from the grapes unfamiliar to us.   I can’t recall drinking a glass of wine that was undrinkable or had any “off” flavors.

At the end of our journey we stayed at The Yeatman hotel.  Yeatman is the parent company for Fonseca, Croft and Yeatman ports and they have now branched out and developed 5-star resorts in Portugal.  We had another 14-course dinner at their 1-star restaurant, The Yeatman.  Another wonderful feast artfully prepared and presented.   They used a wooden port shipping box to present the first of many amuse bouches.  I took a photo of their butter since we have all eaten David Kinch’s hand-churned butter at Manresa.  This butter was made from cow, goat and sheep cream and served on a Himalayan Pink Salt block.  You see how hard it is to resist eating bread in Portugal?  Each dish was a surprise and brought rave reviews!

We wandered about Porto for a day using the “hop-on, Hop-off” buses to explore.  A working city filled with familiar names like Fonseca, Taylor, Croft, Cockburns, Churchill, Quinta do Noval as well as beautiful cathedrals, tiled train stations,  and museums.

TBH, by now I was “done” with gourmet meals and longed for simple homemade meals at home.  Good thing because our trip was over and we journeyed home, 14 days after leaving Cupertino.

And now to get ready for our own 3-star dinner on June 4^th.  See you and your dishes soon!