Beira-Lisboa

Lisbon at midday in June smells of sardines on coals — the entire Alfama district lights up grills, and the smoke drifts up the tile-walled alleys. At any pastelaria, a paper sleeve holds two warm pastel de nata fresh from the oven; you eat them standing at the counter. At dinner there's bacalhau (salt cod) somewhere on the menu — Brás with eggs and potatoes, Gomes de Sá baked with onions, à lagareiro on a bed of roasted potatoes. The country claims 365 ways to cook it. The central kitchen claims most of them.

Within Portugal's regional kitchens, the Beira-Lisboa axis is the cosmopolitan center — the Tagus river capital plus Coimbra's university towns and the Beira mountain villages. This is where bacalhau became the national obsession, where the pastel de nata took its modern form (in the Belém monastery in the 1830s), and where the most-exported Portuguese flavors all live. It's also the geographic middle: Lisbon eats both north and south, and the rest of Portugal eats what Lisbon decides is good.