What you need to know about the Portuguese before holidaying there

A nation surrounded by fresh fish, where salted cod shipped in from the other side of Europe is the king of the table. Where you can get away with mixing seafood with red wine, white wine or even green wine – all excellent quality and even better prices. Where the rules (and the clock) don’t need to be respected but the people definitely do. Where long summer days on the beach are a human right, not just a rite of passage, and the traditional music is either melancholy and meaningful or zany and dripping in dirty double meanings.

Here’s what to expect when you bump elbows with the locals on your next escape to Portugal.

Sun, sand and… snails?

While the French enjoy a handful of escargot smothered in lashings of butter, garlic and parsley, the most popular Portuguese equivalents are tinier, richer in flavour – somehow snailier – and best sucked back by the dozen after a long, hot summer’s day at the beach. For the average Lusitanian there’s no better cure to sunstroke than an ice-cold Super Bock and a plate piled high with addictive caracóis. Sucking the tiny snails from their shells takes patience, so perhaps the ritual is as much about time lingering over equally tiny imperiais (beers) with friends as the afternoon slips into the evening.

Lunch is serious business

While many southern European cities enjoy a strong lunch culture, few do it quite like Lisbon. Every day of the week the tasca terraces fill with hungry workers enjoying a long, leisurely luncheon. It’s no surprise when midweek specials score you the plate of the day, coffee, wine and dessert with change from €10 (£8.50). The Portuguese capital counts 1,256 restaurants per 100,000 people, according to a slightly rubbery 2018 statistic from the World Cities Forum and Zomato. The next best city is Tokyo, with a measly 1,100.

Codfish is king

Step into any food market and the pungent smell will hit you before you spy the rock-hard guitars of flayed, salted cod. There’s no food more Portuguese than bacalhau. With a different recipe for every day of the year and you’d be hard-pressed to find a traditional restaurant without it on the menu. But while Portugal’s Atlantic coast is blessed with incredible fresh fish, cod is not one of them. In a tradition dating to the seafaring 1500s, it’s fished in the icy waters of Iceland and Norway, packed in salt and shipped all the way back to Portugal to be rinsed, rehydrated and cooked. Ease into the strong flavour with an eggy bacalhau à Brás or creamy bacalhau com natas.

No habla Español

The fastest way to offend a Portuguese person? Speak to them in Spanish. If you can’t fumble through a few basic greetings in Portuguese – one of the most spoken languages in the world – then just speak English. If you ask “fala Inglês?” the majority will humbly answer “a little” before launching into fluent English, but drop a “gracias” or a “buenos dias” and you’ll be straight in the bad books.

A religious love for eggs

Portugal’s other great love is the humble egg. Find them poached in soups, fried atop steaks, boiled with bacalhau and beaten with sugar in seemingly every single dessert. Gleaming, golden-hued doces conventuais (convent sweets) fill the counters of bakeries everywhere. For centuries, nuns baked up a storm using cane sugar from Brazil and leftover yolks, a byproduct of making wine and starching religious habits. From the same basic ingredients somehow every town created entirely different textures, tastes and shapes. Seek out ovos moles in Aveiro, queijadas in Évora, travesseiros in Sintra, and, of course, the famous Pastel de Belém.

Respect for people over rules

The pandemic has revealed how strongly the Portuguese respect their community. While normally lax on rule following in a very southern European way, the Portuguese did exactly as they were told when the first lockdown hit. Perhaps it should have been expected. While rules around street parking, speeding, jaywalking and buying metro tickets are made to be broken, queues, pedestrian crossings and priority seating on buses are respected to an almost laughable degree. On more than one occasion I’ve seen someone fail to stop at a crosswalk, only to slam on the brakes and skid to a halt, blocking my path so they could apologise sincerely for not seeing me step out.

Olive oil, garlic, coriander – repeat

Portuguese food is more than custard tarts and cod fish. If you suffer from the dreaded gene that makes coriander taste like soap, you’ll need to master the phrase “sem coentros” because Portuguese food uses the herb liberally. The classic combination of olive oil, garlic and coriander is at its most perfect in a steaming bowl of amêijoas (clams) à Bulhão Pato.

A special nickname for the British

British holidaymakers in the Algarve have one thing on their minds: sunshine. Sadly the sun is incompatible with the fair skin of many Ingleses, earning them a special nickname from the Portuguese. If you hear someone say “bife” (sounds like “beef”) they’re either talking about the steak they had for lunch or the state of your sunburn.