Portugal is famous for it's history, architecture and art as well as for its cuisine and wine. There are two things you should not forget to do when you travel Portugal: taste Portuguese national cuisine and wine. Portuguese art of cookery reflects both its history and traditions as well as contacts with other cultures. Today it's well-known around the world due to its profit and originality. Undoubtedly eating and drinking in Portugal will draw your attention.

Age of Discovery influenced Portuguese cuisine as well as other countries' cuisines because tomatoes, potatoes, Brazilian pineapples and chilli peppers were brought to Portugal. But still lots of ingredients which are widely used in Portugese cuisine were adopted from other countries.

In case you travel Portugal and become interested in it's national cookery you find out that in different regions it's different but still shellfish and fresh fish can be found in any menu in any restaurant or café. There are lots of seafood restaurants in the country. "Bacalhau" is a national Portuguese dish. This is a salted and dried cod. They say that nowadays Portuguese have somewhere about 365 recipes for preparing salted and dried cod, so they have one definite recipe for every day within a year.

"Cozido à portuguesa" is one more national Portuguese dish you should try when you travel Portugal. This is a meat dish including various kinds of meat, preferably the main kind of meat is port, which is cooked and served up in different ways. "Cozido à portuguesa" is a braise meat with vegetables which has it's unique taste.

Visiting the best places in Portugal you can enjoy different traditional national dishes. For example in Porto you can try such traditional dish as tripe combined with haricot beans.

When you travel Portuguese you will notice that breakfast is of less importance than lunch. For breakfast Portuguese usually have coffee with bread rolls and lunch can last minimum two hours. Soup is a dish which is usually eaten and served for any course. This soup is called "caldo verde", it's ingredients include potato, bits of sausage and shredded cabbage.      

Wine

You certainly have to try famous Portuguese wine in case you travel Portugal. Port is one of the most popular around the world wine you should necessarily taste. The legend says that once two sons of wine merchant from England liked this wine were much and decided to take it home. During their long trip they added brandy to wine in order to make it stronger and created Port. Moving around Portugal you can taste different wines because they differs from region to region. We recommend you to try Dão table wines and Buçaco's red and white wines.