Preamable
Travel isn't all about hiking and scenic views. It's also about food! Today I'm going to share some of the food that we ate on our vacation in the Azores. Let's take a look!
Food
The first meal to show you was probably the best food that we had on the islands and a restaurant that I would recommend.
The restaurant was a newly opened and was called Musa. It was located in a small hotel just outside of the old town core in Ponta Delgada.
We ordered wine from the region with dinner from the Pico island. I found the wine to be pretty decent. From what we tried. We always try to drink local wine when we travel. We had bread to start, as an appetizer that night.
For my main course I ordered pork cheeks and risotto. My wife had a fish dish that I didn't get a photo of. Both dishes were tasty.
For desert I had the chocolate mousse with caramel and hazelnuts and she had the pavlova. Chocolate mousse and pavlova seemed to be staple dessert on the island - they appeared on nearly all of the menus that we encountered. There was nothing wrong with that of course, both tended to be delicious and neither are common in Canada so we weren't complaining.
One of our meals in Ponta Delgada was at a place called Louvre Michaelense. This location had an awesome vibe inside especially for pre-dinner drinks. We ate dinner there at the bar one night and watched the bartender create some seriously cool looking cocktails. It was like a dinner and a show type of experience. I wish I would have taken photos of the drinks but she (the bartender) was like 2 feet in front of us so it was a bit awkward to take pictures in the moment. I would have had to explain that I'm not filming or taking photos of her, just her masterpiece cocktails. It just wasn't worth the explanation.
The vibe in the restaurant was also very cool though. It was built inside an old apothecary that still had the existing shelves and cabinets. If I had one food and drink recommendation in Ponta Delgada Sao Miguel it would be Louvre Michaelense, even over Musa.
The cocktails were the star there but the food was also good. I ate the pork belly and it was tasty.
At another restaurant we had two desserts that had some neat presentation.
The first was a simple pavlova again but it was made to look like the blue hydrangeas that are common on the island. The picture doesn't do it justice but it was novel presentation.
At the same location I had chocolate mousse with blackberry caviar pearls. It was served in a caviar tin and was also a pretty unique presentation because it really did look like caviar.
The blackberry pearls were a novelty but they felt very much like it was all for the presentation. They were almost too much when eating it. I dont want to say that it was a case of style over substance but I will say that liked it for that one experience and would probably ask for the mousse alone without the blackberry gel pearls if I ate it again.
On the Sao Jorge island, which I haven't posted about yet, I tried a traditional dish called Cozido (if I'm remembering the name correctly). It was basically a variety of meat (pork, blood sausage a spicy sausage similar to chorizo) served with orange slices and sweet potatoes (or yams). This dish was very good but very rich and heavy in the meat department. I recall that by the end I was struggling to eat the last of the blood sausage which was really good but just a bit much for me in terms of quantity. The sweet potatoes seemed to be a staple on the island and were served with many dishes. They were always very tasty and had a different color and flavor then the ones that we get in Canada.
For dessert I ate a simple cheese cake that night. It was fine but nothing special.
Next on the Faial island, which I also haven't posted about yet, we had a meal that started with a breaded sausage ball appetizer. The sausage was a traditional variety of the islands that again had a spicy chorizo like flavor.
For the main, my wife and I both ate fish. She had smoked tuna and I had the Grouper. This was the first time that I had eaten Grouper before. It was a little different than other fish I'm used to eating but very good. Honestly, I pretty much like anything and everything really.
On our last night on the island of Faial we went to a sushi restaurant. We don't normally go for sushi when we travel in Europe so that was a little out of character for us. Maybe it was the fact that we were on an island and fish seemed to be the theme of our meals. Either way I didn't regret the decision. It was a excellent last meal of our vacation.
Conclusion
To very simply sum up our food experience in the Azores I'd say that the food was tasty and the portions were large and hearty, but the dishes were maybe not as refined as the food in some other parts of Europe. We have been to mainland Portugal, to Madeira island, and now to three of the islands in the Azores, and I would say that food on the Azores was perhaps my least favorite of the lot. That's not to say that I didn't like the food, I actually enjoyed everything, I was just less impressed by it than those other locations. This does make sense to me though considering that an island in general may have a more limited supply of resources than the mainland and also considering that Madeira is more of a resort like destination that caters to cruise ships. For these reasons I can understand why the food might be slightly better at those destinations. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our food experience in the Azores overall.
