2019-02-01_Lonely_Planet_Traveller

Dine out on

petiscos, the

Portuguese take

on tapas

‘Petiscos are a tremendous way to quickly

access Portuguese food culture,’ says André

Apolinário, co-founder of Taste Porto Food

Tours, as he consults the menu at Tascö,

a restaurant tucked away down a shaded

side street. ‘It’s like time-travelling back to

the way we used to eat. This meal could be

lunch, dinner or something in between –

what’s important is that you get your

friends around you, and you share.’ Dishes

begin to emerge from the low-lit interior –

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the city’s notoriously meaty francesinha

sandwich, eaten with cocktail sticks. Next,

pork shoulder cooked in white wine and

served with pickles, and crispy fritters of

salted cod. Every portion is generous and

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made to fuel drinking and talking.

There’s plenty of both at Taberna do

Largo, behind an unsigned red door on a

pedestrianised shopping street, Rua das

Flores. The tiny restaurant’s tables spill

onto the pavement, where couples watch

the world go by with drink in hand. I order

red wine and the house speciality, chouriço,

cooked at the table in a terracotta bath of

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pride themselves on doing petiscos a little

differently. The tradition of food meant

for sharing chimes with the modern

restaurant obsession with small plates.

Here, exposed concrete, bare bulbs and

wall-mounted bicycles signal that this is

hipster territory. I order cassava chips,

which arrive looking like giant wood-

shavings from a carpenter’s workbench.

Petiscos (small eats)
take on an artistic
quality at Cantina 32.
Opposite, top left:
The restaurant’s
decoration includes
50 February 2019 wall-mounted bicycles