Region

Gastronomy

Try and enjoy the traditional regional gastronomy! It offers an enormous variety of cheeses. One of them is the Serpa cheese, possibly the most famous traditional cheese in the Alentejo. It is a small round cheese and it is dried on straw. The traditional Portuguese cookery means a lot of pork (porco preto = black free-range pig), lamb and mutton. Fish is a specialty of the coastal regions; visitors should try some of the many delicious fish the restaurants have to offer. Dried salted codfish, Bacalhau is essentially the national dish of Portugal. It is said the Portuguese have 365 recipes to cook the bacalhau.
Sharing the meal together is very important to the Portuguese. They even use two different verbs: in the middle of the day the people go out to 'almoçar' (lunch) and in the evening it is called 'jantar' (dinner). Dessert is never forgotten and is an important part of the meal. The Portuguese love sweets: they have an enormous selection of 'bolos'. We invite you to take a regional wine to go along with your meal. The Alentejo has, surprisingly enough, eight high quality wine (DOC) producing regions: Borba, Portalegre, Redondo, Reguengas, Évora, Vidigueira, Granja/Amamreleja and Moura. They are more than worth a try!