How to Read a Portuguese Menu

A Portuguese menu looks, at first glance, like a list of dishes. It is closer to a list of instructions. Nearly every line tells you three things — what the thing is, where the recipe comes from, and what has been done to it over heat — and once those three parts separate out, a menu you could not read becomes a menu you can order from with some confidence.

This is the case for learning a little of the language before a holiday, made in its most practical form. Not fluency: forty words, most of which will appear on every menu you meet between Porto and the Algarve.

The cooking words do most of the work

Grelhado, from grelhar, is narrow: cooked on a grill or griddle. Assado, from assar, is broader than the English roasted — it covers cooking by dry heat generally, in an oven or over charcoal, which is why the sardinha assada of every June street festival and a chicken from the oven carry the same word. No forno means in the oven, and settles the question whenever assado leaves it open. Learn those three and you already know how half the menu will arrive.

Then come the styles, which are prepositional: à plus a place or a person. À lagareiro means in the manner of the olive-press worker — baked in generous olive oil with garlic and smashed potatoes. À transmontana means in the style of Trás-os-Montes, the north-eastern uplands. The grammar is doing the geography for you.

Portions are a language of their own

Dose is a full portion; meia dose is half of one, and asking for it is entirely normal rather than apologetic. Entradas — literally entries — are the starters. Prato do dia is the dish of the day, usually the best-value line on the page and often the only one that changes.

The names are places, and often people

Caldo verde is simply green broth, the kale-and-potato soup of the Minho in the north. Cataplana is not a dish but a pan: the hinged copper vessel of the Algarve, whose shape gives its name to whatever is sealed inside it. Francesinha — little French girl — is Porto's answer to the croque-monsieur, created in the city in the 1950s and defended there with some heat.

Bifana comes from bife, a slice of meat, and is the thin pork sandwich eaten standing up. Prego means nail, and is its beef cousin. Bacalhau à Brás and amêijoas à Bulhão Pato — salt cod with egg and shoestring potatoes, clams with garlic and coriander — carry the names of the people tradition credits with them, which is the most Portuguese thing about them.

One name that is legally protected

Queijo da Serra da Estrela, the soft sheep's cheese of the mountains that share its name, holds EU protected designation of origin status. That is not a marketing flourish: it means the cheese sold under that name has to come from that region and be made that way. When a menu bothers to give a food its full territorial name, it is usually telling you something true.

The plate you did not order

Bread, olives, butter, perhaps a small pâté arrive without being asked for. This is the couvert, and it is not a gift. It has to be priced on the menu; it may be charged for if you eat it, and it may not be charged for if you leave it untouched or send it back — so the useful sentence is the one you say before you reach for the bread: não queremos o couvert, obrigado. It is an ordinary thing to say, and politely said it causes no offence.

None of this is difficult. It is, however, the difference between eating what you recognise and eating what the place is actually good at — and the words that unlock it are the same words that turn up in every conversation about food in Portugal, which is to say most conversations in Portugal.

That is generally how a language starts to be useful. Not with the grammar, but with a menu, at a table, on the second evening of a holiday.