Cuisine of Graciosa for gourmets. Places for dinner - best restaurants

Here on Graciosa Island, the local cuisine is a sort of mixture of Portuguese cooking traditions and unique cooking discoveries of local chefs. Originally, people who were coming to the island during the times of settlement also brought as if all the well-known Portuguese recipes. Nevertheless, some of them just didn’t catch on here, the others changed unrecognizably. Aside from it, locals had also been trying cooking dished from all those unique products one can find here. Nowadays, the local cuisine is quite distinctive and it’s definitely worth spending your time and money on exploring it.

Tourists from all over the world come to Graciosa Island, so such dishes as pizza, pasta, hamburgers which are absolutely casual for us one can easily find here too. Besides, there are diverse sushi bars as well. Then, remember that lunch has always been the most important meal of the day for Portuguese, and local inhabitants are not the exception in that case. So, if you’re already dreaming about sitting in a restaurant drinking wine and enjoying a nice meal till midnight, it would be actually pretty hard to make it real. The reason of it is that all the restaurants close already at circa 10 p.m.

You might find restaurants who have longer working hours during the holiday season, however, they’re tourists-oriented so prices there are really high. Tips are obligatory here, but they’re not included. So, one has also to leave a 10-15% tip for a waiter. So, you can start your journey into the local cuisine from bolo lêvedo – a flatbread as an alternative to our common bread. It’s also eaten with hot or cold meals and soups. Copyright www.orangesmile.com

However, bolo lêvedo can also be served as a separate dish. For instance, locals spread jelly, butter or honey and eat it as a dessert together with coffee or tea. Besides, the also like eating cheeses separately. There are different kinds of cheese on the island, so you can easily find something you’d like best. Or you can order a cheese platter and try different ones at once. You should definitely try queigo fresco – a soft cheese – which is served with pimenta da terra – a hot paprika sauce. It’s spicy and tastes so good.

Even though there is a huge variety of fish dishes on Graciosa (as it’s an island), meat-eaters could taste delicious meat dishes too. Locals raise pigs, chickens and cows, so there are quite enough options to choose from. Stewed pork in different variations is the basis of many meat dishes. They use diverse seasonings during the cooking process and it’s always extremely tasty. Besides, you can also order fried meat with vegetables. The dish is served on a traditional island wooden plate. Alcatra – several kinds of meat baked in a pot – has a very interesting taste.

And don’t forget to try Piri Piri – Portuguese chicken. Moreover, local chefs also like cooking stewed peppers stuffed with various fillings: meat, fish or vegetables. Then, there is another peculiar dish – marinated pork liver. To those tourists who are keen on everything exotic, we would recommend trying local blood sausage. Common European steaks or baked meat with cheese are also served in local restaurants. Moreover, meat is an ingredient of some first courses. It could not only be a broth-base but as the main ingredient of pottage as well. In addition, people, who love first courses in particular, should like fish pottage and a veggy sour soup (it can be cooked with vegetables only or with cabbage and meat).

And, logically, there is an enormous variety of fish dishes on the island. For instance, tuna is one of the main ingredients of most salads and fish platters, and it looks really nice due to its red meat. Fired eel, baked cod and pickled mugil are also extremely delicious. Squids in bacon is a really peculiar dish too. Above all, one and the same dish from one and the same seafood can be cooked in a thousand different ways. For example, you can stew octopus in wine, bake it with vegetables or fry with rice. Meals with shrimps, shellfish and balanomorphas are highly popular among locals. And you should try patella, as you might never have a chance to try it anywhere outside Graciosa Island.

As for dessert, restaurants offer lemon ice-cream, banana and pineapple puddings, strawberry mousse, orange roll, and fruit platters. If you’re looking for something heartier, order a Queijadas da Graciosa (kind of chocolate cake) or cronut. You can eat with, for instance, tea, coffee or passion fruit, orange or pineapple juices. Concerning alcohol, you have to try vines from local vineyards, as they’re not exported somewhere outside the country, Angelica liquor, and Aguardiente.