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Don’t worry; I’m not going to turn this into a travel blog. Now that I’ve caught up on my post-trip laundry, photos, etc., however, I thought I’d do one post on what I did eat in Portugal. I can’t find my notes, which were probably too sketchy anyway, so I’m going largely from memory here. But that’s what we want, right? Memorable food!

Favorite dish: This would have to be the dessert at Antiga Padaria Lisboa, a restaurant in view of the Museu de Arte Antiga whose very handsome waiters made dining all the more pleasurable. The dessert was a sort of cheesecake, perhaps made with ricotta and only mildly sweet, topped with a divine sauce of wild berries. Language barriers precluded a translation of the berry type (where is the dictionary when you need it??), and maybe there is none. My friend and travel companion, who is English, thought they resembled blackcurrants, which are popular in Europe and little known in the U.S. If these were indeed blackcurrants, we U.S. residents can only hope their cultivation becomes more widespread over here. The berries and sauce had such a powerful sweet/tart flavor that I wanted to lick the plate. Sorry no photo. It was dark in there!

Other favorite dish. This one also involves fruit, and we had largely the same fruit salad in more than one location, but the first was at the York House in Lisbon. There, the salad included apples, mango, pineapple and oranges as well as, in smaller quantities, peach, papaya and kiwi, all in dense fresh orange juice. It was delicious and refreshing.

Favorite main dish. My favorite dish turned out to be something unexpected, a sort of seafood stew (sorry, no exact name) from Restaurant Sr. Vinho in Lisbon, famous for its fado music. According to things I read before we went, the Portuguese are especially fond of fish, especially salt cod or bacalhau, and pork. I had one pork dish, which was good, but nothing to get excited about, and I ordered cod twice, once at a touristy restaurant and once at a nice restaurant (sorry about the bad, low-light pic). In between, my friend ordered it at the little restaurant with the fabulous dessert. The variations in the cod dishes were definitely less than I’d expected, and none of them got me very excited. I hope any Portuguese readers will forgive this afront. The seafood stew, though, had a nicely flavored sauce and generous amounts of shrimp, some kind of mussels or clams, octopus and, naturally, salt cod along with macaroni elbows. It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever eaten much of (remember, I’m from landlocked Kansas!), but it was quite tasty, and the octopus, a new item for me, was far more tender and pleasant than squid, to my way of thinking.

The big picture: I was surprised by the generally low level of seasoning in most dishes we had. There just wasn’t much in the way of salt, pepper or herbs in most cases. Two dishes we had at the York House in Lisbon (a stuffed zucchini and gazpacho) were quite nicely seasoned, but most food was fairly bland. As to the national specialties: I’m suspecting that salt cod is like lots of other foods—people love it for its familiarity and associations with happy occasions. Lacking that background, I found the dish to be adequate but uninspiring. I’m sure plenty of people (including me) would say the same about many American favorites.

So that’s the Portugal report. This blog will return to its usual programming with the next post. Obrigada.