007Steve

Makes it all worthwhile.....
Algarve crowned Best Gastronomic Destination in Europe - The Portugal News
.... Better for you than deep-fried-mars-bars...

EMR

They obviously did not visit the chips with everything tourist restaurants.,

Red Eric

You lucky devils. And chips too, you say?

Hope you're making the most of it. Up here in the Frozen North, we get fobbed off with gristly pigs' ears, stewed blood and the occasional bit of tripe if we're in a particularly decadent mood. Or a salted sardine.

EMR

Apart from a few premium restaurants the Portuguese food we have had in the north has usually been much better than in the Algarve.
But the weather , a different matter.

Red Eric

We like to turn the taps on when we get an invasion - stops the buggers coming back.

And keep schtum about the food, please.

macliam

Don't forget the cabbage.........

macliam

My FiL lived between Aveiro and Viseu.
When I first visited (during the late stone age) I was introduced to the delights of blindfold food and drink (broa, feijoada, canja, morangeiro...), don't ask, just taste.
In Ireland we always said we ate every part of the pig but the whistle. When I spoke to my Da, I told him that in Portugal they eat the whistle too............
I introduced "fusion food" to the family ...... a full Irish a la Portugaise: ovos fritos, morcela, farinheira, presunto e salsicha fresca with broa in place of soda bread. Two problems, at that time field mushrooms were mistrusted, hard to find and even harder to get anyone to eat..... and the fact that a meal without cabbage was almost unknown!
On the other hand, back in the UK my go-to easy meal is "Feijoada a inglesa", heinz beans, pre-fried bacon and black pudding, black pepper - and NO CABBAGE!!

Loafing Along

But did you see which restaurant won the top award ??
The restaurant Infante Panor mico, in Praia Verde (Castro Marim), was also one of the winners, after being elected ‘Best European Restaurant 2018’.

In summer the place is a zoo ! Huge, noisy and unexceptional food..

Amazing just below it is "Pezinhos na areia" - far superior. A proper restaurant with linen tablecloths, a rare item in the region.

007Steve

But look at the view LA !
OK, so maybe it's not 5 star but the fact that it's sooooo crowded tells you something about what people go there for.
And macliam, ....you can have cabbage there any way you want!

EMR

Beans and cabbage, a volatile combination.,🤔

macliam

Interestingly, the results are known in Portuguese as "fruto seco"

EMR

I was watching a cookery prog on Saturday , one of the Thai dishes translated literraly as " stinky beans "..

GeniB

We have some exceptional restaurants In the Algarve. People just have to know where ,and be prepared to pay a little extra. OH and I just went to a fairly basic Italian restaurant at the behest of some friends and their visitors. A lot of time was spent on finding the most recognisable dishes ( for Brits) and then finding the cheapest wine ( because of course they wanted more than one bottle) After what was a very reasonable , if not exceptional meal the OH of the visiting couple said . ' You get very poor food here don't you! Surprised I asked why he said that. 'Well its very basic isn't it.' 'In what way I persisted' He struggled for a minute and then said'Well there are no sauces like the French cuisine- I laughed. I said you do know why the French invented sauces don't you? Because their basic ingredients were crap. It was to disguise food that had gone 'off' well past its sell by date. The Portuguese food is fresh and not messed about with. I then asked him where he and his wife went to eat in Winchester ( where they live) 'Oh we don't go out to eat there he said huffily Far too expensive. Talk about confused. His wife then looked at me a little accusingly. 'Don't you have dinner parties here in your own homes'? Um no I said sweetly we don't need to ... plenty of places to eat out here. cheaply as we have tonight... or more expensively if we want to.
I find that most British visitors want cheap and cheerful with plenty of inexpensive booze. Gourmet is not top of their list.

BillBullock

I love your story GeniB. How very accurate!

Loafing Along

That's the problem, yes there are some excellent restaurants around but , if you check the dreaded TripAdvsiors there seems to be an invisible barrier at about maximum of €20,- per person..Above that, far tooo expensive, they may even have white linen tablecloths which of course enables them to charge more.