Check into our boutique hotel in Porto and join your fellow travelers in the lobby. We’ll walk to Nuno Mendes’s restaurant Cozinha das Flores, where everything is cooked over an open fire, for our welcome dinner. Over the restaurant’s contemporary dishes made with local North Portuguese ingredients we’ll get to know each other and learn about the week ahead.

For dinner expect dishes like turnip natas, based on the beloved pastel de nata, but transformed into a savory wonder of creamy turnip custard that’s topped with caviar in a puff pastry, grilled pork and cabbage enchidos, giant noodles with white beans and cod, and delicate almond tarts.

We start our exploration of the Trás-os-Montes story in postcard-perfect Porto, as it has deep connections to tomorrow’s rural destination. Today, however, we experience the urban side of this story. On an all-day walking tour of this beautiful city, we will learn about the complexities and contrasts of Porto and all of the culinary diversity that comes with it. We’ll see century-old opulent Parisian-style cafes, Bangladeshi grocers and rustic cheese-and-sausage shops run by the descendants of the poor migrants from Northern Portugal. These are particularly important for us, as the more recent descendents of these poor migrants are now moving back to the Northeast and will be some of our teachers and guides in Trás-os-Montes. We’ll sample flaky, sweet pastries, olive oils, tinned fish, and smoked meats. We’ll explore the fruit and vegetable stalls of Mercado do Bolhāo, one of Portugal’s finest food markets, and visit a historic grocery selling the classic cheeses of the north. 

At each stop, we’ll learn about the urban side of the Trás-os-Montes history and get prepared to more fully understand its rural heart, which we will immerse ourselves in starting in the morning. After a day of walking and tasting, we’ll relax over a flight of port wines at a historic chapel and then the evening is yours to enjoy as you like.

Pedro, whose owner is a revered meat smoker who runs a fumeiro, or smokehouse, and a typical regional restaurant called a taberna. Smoking meats started before refrigeration as a way to preserve meat but the tradition continues throughout Trás-os-Montes today. We’ll have a classic North Portuguese lunch with Pedro himself. Expect smoked meats, of course, stew and bread. After a quick walk around the very pretty town, we’ll drive to Casa do Eira Longa, our home for two nights. 

The proprietress, Lourdes, is a one woman phenom. She embroiders the sheets on the beds and curtains on the windows, makes the jam, meats and cakes served at breakfast, tends a large vegetable garden and cooks. Her charming, rustic inn includes a swimming pool, a tennis court, abundant pots of geraniums and a small museum of the village. We’ll have time to walk around town or rest before we work together with Lourdes to prepare a light dinner of Caldo Verde, Portugal’s iconic and hearty national dish.

Today we get to bake! After breakfast featuring plenty of coffee and Lourdes’s jams, as well as local cheeses and breads, we’ll drive just ten minutes to see Maria do Carmo in Boticas. Maria is another woman who seems to do everything herself. Yes, she bakes incredible sourdough breads, including the iconic rye bread broa, in her large wood-fired oven. But she also gathers the wood for the oven, raises pigs, smokes their meat for her special holiday bread, keeps chickens, tends her own giant garden, bakes cookies and stews in her oven and started a successful bakery business when she realized the craft was at risk of extinction in her town.

Today we are lucky enough to bake with her and enjoy a lunch she prepares for us.

We’ll end the day with a light dinner at local traditional taberna.

After a lazy morning, we will check out of Eira Longa, say goodbye to Lourdes, and drive out to meet João and Rita, two young chefs who returned to Portugal after cooking in some of the best restaurants in the world. They will be our teachers for two hands-on classes at their restaurant, O Forno do Jales. Today we are also joined by João’s mother for a lesson in making alheiras, a sausage that traces its roots to Jews who came to the region after fleeing the Inquisition in Lisbon. We’ll learn all about its unlikely history as we make it and the rest of our dinner.

With our bellies full, we settle into our hotel and later meet again for a light dinner at a relaxed rural wine bar.

João Menéres is a fifth-generation farmer, who runs a diversified olive, grape and cork farm. Living in Porto but commuting to his farm in Romeu, he is emblematic of the urban-rural relationship in Trás-os-Montes. He also produces some of the best wine and olive oil in Portugal. Today we will spend all day at his farm, Quinta do Romeu, walking the fields and forests, sampling the wine, and watching olive oil production.

We’ll have a late, festive lunch at Maria Rita, the farm’s acclaimed restaurant featuring traditional Northern dishes. Tonight we’re on our own back at the hotel to read, enjoy the lovely gardens, go for a walk or rest.

Today we’ll head into the woods to get to know an innovative forestry project up close. The forests of Trás-os-Montes are under increased wildfire risk and Life Maronesa and Duarte Marques’s EU-supported project uses Maronesa mountain cattle – a traditional Portuguese breed – to help protect these forests from wildfires by eating up brush. Beef from the cattle is, in turn, sold to local markets and chefs, creating a closed-loop system that supports both the ecology and economy.

After a picnic lunch, we’ll meet up again with João and Rita at their restaurant to make dinner in the traditional large iron pots of Trás-os-Montes. These three-legged pots sit in a wood-fired oven for hours, giving us plenty of time to harvest vegetables from the garden and prepare the rest of dinner. Joining us at O Forno do Jales will be all the people we’ve met this week to toast our week in Trás-os-Montes.

We end our trip in Trás-os-Montes. After breakfast, we will arrange for your transport to Porto. Until the next adventure!