Always Trust the Locals: Portugal Edition

For well over a decade, we have always clung to one specific mantra while travelling.  Always trust the locals.  And today was no different!

We have heard nothing but amazing reviews about the local restaurant here in Tabuado, Ze Ligeiro.  Don’t even try to pronounce it, I guarantee you won’t be able to!

After a couple of very active days, with our hike up the mountain day that Jon blogged about and another walking trip into and around Marco de Canavases yesterday, we decided today would be a much-needed rest day while we recover a little.  Which gave us the perfect opportunity to walk into the town square to try this famous restaurant!

The great part about travelling to small towns in foreign countries:  they are authentic, beautiful, and fulfilling experiences.  The bad part:  the language barrier!  After 5-10 very awkward minutes using Google Translate to try to talk to the staff, back and forth, we managed to communicate with them that we wanted to eat lunch and that I am allergic to nuts and fish.  They sat us, asked what we wanted to drink (thankfully, communicating wine and water is pretty easy no matter what Mediterranean country you’re visiting!), and we let the waiter take it from there!

He saw us looking at the menu and trying to decipher it.  Which, thank you Google Translate, we were slowly and painstakingly making our way through.  We decided to trust him when he said he would just bring us wine and foods we would like, no nuts/fish.

ALWAYS trust the locals!

First, the red wine arrived, which was soooo good!  Other than our glass of red in Porto, we have yet to have tried any local Douro red wine.  I was a bit concerned when he let us know it was the nicest bottle in the restaurant.  I was worried the bill would arrive and be astronomical, but I tried to reassure myself we are in Portugal, it will be fine!  And it was.  I should have known better, being in Portugal where the most “expensive” bottle of wine is still less than $7 CAD in shops!

Dish after dish began arriving at our table, giving us enough time to finish ¾ of one before the next arrived.  All of them were utterly spectacular!  We had bread with house-made whipped garlic butter, a local cheese, prosciutto and olive platter, meat pierogis (I have no idea what these things are actually called, that’s just what we have nicknamed them!  They are pork and beef meat mixture with onion and garlic in breading that’s shaped like pierogis and fried in olive oil.  And they are my favourite Portuguese food I’ve found to date!  We see them everywhere and have had them many times.  Sooooo delicious!), fried blooming onion with a thick, black, garlic-flavoured paste (no idea why it was thick or black!), and pork and cheese stuffed mushrooms.

We were beyond full.  We thought it had been a while since we got a new dish, so they knew the perfect amount.  But, this is Portugal, where the mid-day meal is the biggest, longest, and most important meal of the day!  We should have expected one more dish to come.  This amazing pork sausage fried up on a bed of sauteed greens (bok choy?  cabbage?  Who knows, but it was delicious!).  We didn’t think we could get down any more food, but we did manage to find some space!

The girls have always had two separate tubes:  healthy and dessert.  While their healthy tubes were stuffed, thankfully for them their dessert tubes still had plenty of room!  We had stopped to stare into their amazing gelado (Portuguese spelling!) case on the way in!  What’s a beautiful, hot, sunny day and a delicious lunch without gelado to finish it off?

I had told the girls to run up front and decide what they wanted.  But, true to their bashful nature, they asked me to come with them.  While they ordered their gelado, I spied a delicious-looking Limoncello in the gelado case.  Where I had thought a moment before I couldn’t possibly fit anything else in my tummy, I quickly reconsidered and surprised Jon on my return to the table with two shot glasses for us to sip while the girls enjoyed their dessert!  It tasted as delicious and refreshing as it looked!

All in all, we had a beautiful, two-hour authentic meal, chosen by our waiter.  Every dish was amazing and even with everything we got, the meal was insanely cheap compared to Canadian prices!  We will definitely be back there again before we leave, sampling more of whatever the waiter puts in front of us!

We aren’t big on giving unsolicited advice, but alas, here I go:  When you travel, ALWAYS trust the locals!

And now, if you need us, we will be sleeping off our food coma in the backyard in our hammock… Ciao!