My moratorium on posting phone pictures here? Short-lived, apparently. Because when I’m showing around visitors and have Ice the Dog with me, it’s tough to hold a big camera, too. Here’s a curated selection of photos from a “typical” guest week, with a phone in one hand and a dog in the other.
Let’s start with everyone’s favorite topic in Portugal: food. Porto’s food and beverage scene is changing quite dramatically these days, which currently favours cosmopolitan consumers rather than traditional producers. International flavours are taking hold in the city, from Japanese ramen to Venezuelan arepas to Israeli shakshuka — the latter of which was a total surprise to me. I had a tough time finding a neighbourhood place in Tel Aviv last year that served shakshuka, so what are the odds it would show up in Porto??? These days, better than I thought!
The coffee photo above and the shakshuka photo below are both from Zenith Brunch & Tapas, a new spot which I’ve discovered has become a fast favorite with the brunching hipster crowd. While not a morning person, I’ve always been a fan of brunch, and I gathered some friends to try out Zenith. I walked in 10 minutes before they opened, thinking I could at least find a table, but they shooed me out: “We’re not open yet.” Little did I know there was already a queue of people at 9:30, hovering nearby. When we sat down, the place was full!
Verdict? The shakshuka was a nine-euro indulgence, a little on the high side considering how basic the ingredients are. But now that I can find several kinds of harissa paste in the local supermarket here (yay!), I can move on to my next brunch indulgence: Eggs Benedict. I like pancakes, too, but considering how easy they are to make, if I’m going to splash out it will be for Eggs Benny.
That same day, one of the friends I had brunch with introduced me to Glood, a global food market which now has nine stores in Portugal. While the Porto store itself (next to Carolina Michael station) is fairly small, the selection of goods was wider than I’d expected.
This is part of their alcoholic beverage section, which I couldn’t pass without picking up some Old Mout Cider (“mispronounced since 1947”) from Nelson, New Zealand. There were several flavours, and if the passionfruit and apple combination is any indication, I look forward to trying the rest. I also bought a package of British biscuits with toffee, and promptly demolished it.
Later in the week, Ice made plenty of metro trips and made plenty of friends along the way. No outing with this dog is complete without someone falling in love with him, even with that snout cap. It’s amusing to see grown men make kissing sounds at my dog.
Out and about with the visitors in Vila Nova de Gaia, on the south side of the Douro River, I noticed a lot more street art in the neighbourhood (the top photo is a new Hazul work on the Porto side):
This last one by Bordalo II is pretty recent — a visitor pointed it out to me when she spotted it being assembled in early June:
On the north side of the river in Matosinhos, we brought our visitors to the seafood restaurant district between the cruise ship terminal and the Port of Leixões. Restaurante O Barco Velho is where I had the juiciest, tastiest dourada EVER:
You’ve heard of ice fishing, right? Here’s our own version of Ice fishing:
And last but not least, a video clip from Jardim das Virtudes: