I come here via trusting my tour guide. With his knowledge of being a true foodie and wine…read moreconnoisseur and 35 years+ experience, his understanding of my adventurous personality, before we enter the restaurant, he already knows I will unintentionally leave my mark. One of the owners or managers cannot believe a tourist let alone an American tourist would venture out to Ponte de Lima.
Apparently, I also do the "classic sustainability practice of" let's try not to waste food by asking to take home the leftovers. At this point, I don't have to ask my tour guide to do so. He helps me out with this and laughs about it and tells me that some restaurants including this one will be talking about me days after I have left, lol.
I had a fried meat variety with lemon and pork and rice saucy mixture. My tour guide had tried 4 other places and only this place got it right for him. The other places, maybe some of the meat was off, or the rice mixture was off, or maybe the seasonings just didn't work the best or he just simply liked this combination the most- I am not sure. I most certainly loved the combination.
If I had wanted to clean my plate, my tour guide has to keep reminding me to use the bread since it is there rather than use my utensil(s) only like a semi-barbarian.
He noticed I always choose the Portuguese corn bread over the other single roll because the other single roll looks too similar to a dinner roll you can get in the States. The Portuguese corn bread has a different bready texture than American/Southern corn bread. Both are good in their own ways- no doubt.
Our waiter was so bewildered by the appearance and experience I went in with food that he went to tell some of his relatives that he cannot believe such a person would come all the way to his restaurant (let alone take home the leftovers afterward). He knows his food is good but for someone to choose his restaurant and especially over 4 others in the general area. It made me feel like why can't I be featured on a foodie TV show, haha.
One of the other staff who sold some alcohol at the establishment provided us with free brandy and port wine to add to our coffee. I saw a Portuguese coffee listing image with options earlier this day ironically and my tour guide told me there were a few inaccuracies about it and that coffee and brandy was not super common in Portugal.
But yet "of course" we had locally made brandy by the restaurant itself to add our after-lunch coffee to and the combination wasn't bad to me. What're the chances? Haha. The brandy was very quality and I am sure I would've felt the same way with their Port Wine too but my time was limited and I and probably the tour guide did not want to abuse their generosity.
I learned from my tour guide that it would be helpful
for me to understand and learn more about layers of food and that these kind of things can definitely be learned.
