Alentejo is set to be Portugal’s next big destination for food lovers, and this feast was here to prove it.
In the The town of Vila Viçosa is home to no more than 9,000 residents. This little place, nestled in the Évora district in Alentejo, is barely a speck on the map of Portugal. But Alentejo Marmoris Hotel was possibly one of the grandest buildings I had entered in recent years.
The owners of the hotel also own the nearby marble quarry, and not one corner of the building is left undecorated with something constructed from this locally sourced stone. Upon arrival, the back wall of the reception is adorned with rugged marble and water trickling down over the top of it. The ballroom shows off a floor that is constructed from four different types of marble. The statue in the lounge area is made of…wait for it…marble!
But perhaps the most impressive out of all this marble work was the table that I sat down at in the restaurant.
This large table, which could easily seat 15 to 20 people at once, was made entirely from a rectangle slab of marble. The unfinished edges peered up through the surface of the table, which was simply one large sheet of glass.
On top of the table, aside from usually cutlery, glasses and plates being laid out in a carefully arranged manner, there was a marble butter tray, a round dish propped up by three feet in the shapes of leaves, and a sculpted cylinder of butter standing on the top. It was just the first of many interesting and impressive things I was going to see throughout the evening.
The Narcissus Fernandesii Restaurant is committed to showing off the flavours of Alentejo and focusing on the wonderful Alentejo wines from the region.
We are informed that this evening’s meal is going to consist of five courses, and given that my experience in Alentejo so far today had been “death by food” — in the best possible way — I am sceptical as to how I would be able to fit it all in.
In fact, if I was to be completely honest, I was sceptical how such a refined restaurant as this was going to show off the true, traditional cuisine of Alentejo – something that I believe in when speaking about a region or country’s cuisine, and something I actively seek out on my adventures.
What I’d learnt so far was that Alentejo’s cuisine is simple. It’s not about making a statement. It’s about fresh ingredients, prepared simply.
Aside from the food itself, I felt like not much more than a speck of dirt in this large, elegant dining room. For starters, it had been terrible weather in Portugal and I’d been wearing the same outfit of warm clothes for the last few days.
Secondly, in my world, good traditional food doesn’t mean fine dining, and sometimes just because a place “looks” nice, it doesn’t mean that the food is necessarily going to do the talking. In my experience, the “nice looking” places generally lead to the most disappointing eating experiences. Yes, I guess it’s fair to say that I was sceptical about the meal to come.
Chef’s Surprise
The first dish on the menu is the “Chef’s Surprise”. I am presented with a white mug, with white foam on the top and told that it’s a “cappuccino”. One could be forgiven for thinking that I’d accidentally been served coffee at the wrong end of the meal. But the “cappuccino” tonight is a pea cappuccino with white truffle cream – imagine a light pea soup with a foam top that carries the flavour of truffles.
I am somewhat a sucker for truffles. The flavour of truffles is something that can’t be compared to anything else in the world – you just have to try it for yourself – and if there is something with truffles on the menu, I often find myself plunging right in and ordering it. I am not a food snob. I am not fancy. I just love truffles.
But while you might first relate truffles to North Italy, Alentejo has its own story with truffles too.
In Alentejo, white truffles are commonly found in the montados. There are the paddocks where the black pigs graze, the very same pigs that are reared to become porco preto ibérico, the amazing acorn-fed ham that is produced only in this region, and perhaps the most famous exported product that this region can call their own.
So given the relationship that truffles have to these wonderful creatures, I guess it’s only fitting that on this gastronomical adventure through Alentejo’s cuisine, the white truffle finds itself in the very first course.
The Seafood Course
Next up is the course I am most excited about, the seafood course, and tonight’s fish dish is a local dish called caldeirada. This is a typical Portuguese fish stew which really varies from region to region, depending on the local ingredients available to those cooking it.
It’s a traditional dogfish stew that takes its name from caldeirão, the metal cauldron that the dish comes cooked in. While in some local mom and pop joints around Portugal you may very well get the stew served to the table in the same dish it is cooked in, for the purpose of tonight’s rather refined meal the caldeirada has been carefully presented in a porcelain bowl.
The fish we are eating is cação, or dogfish. I can’t help but ponder for a moment how this is really related to Alentejo, but the reality is that due to Portugal’s shape, the furthest any part of Portugal is from the coast is 150 kilometres, so whether a place sits on the coast or not, seafood is something very typical all over the country.
Although we are seated in the depths of Alentejo, cação (dogfish) is worth a special mention.
This particular fish was one of the few fish from the Atlantic that reached the majority of the population, no matter how near or far from the coast they were located. Dogfish is a durable fish and can handle the transport into the inland regions. But aside from this, it was also the cheapest, leading it to become a seafood sample in the traditional Alentejo cuisine.
Although the recipe for Caldeirada varies from region to region, town to town, and even house to house, as people make use of what ingredients they have available to them, generally tomatoes, peppers and onions feature in the list of staple ingredients. When I think of vegetables in a stew, I think of vegetables chopped up and in a broth, and although these typical vegetables are present, in the name of creative thinking and presentation they are given a different form.
The fish is carefully placed in a light tomato puree, with half a red chilli and a whole small green pepper adorning the fish on either side. Across the top of the whole dish lies an early harvested leek that has been prepared on the grill.
The Meat Course
Next up on the menu is something called Carnalentejana. This literally translates to “meat from Alentejo”, and today’s offering is língua de Vaca – beef tongue. My first thought is “here we go, now the chef is trying to show off, trying to make the meal interesting, by including the strangest possible ingredient”.
But while top to tail eating is something that is a relatively new concept in many countries, in Portugal it’s something that has existed possibly for as long as eating meat has existed.
It’s normal, it’s nothing to raise an eyelid about. In fact, beef tongue is quite common in Portugal, so I guess I’ll be trying it whether I like it or not.
Like the pigs, cows are also raised in the Alentejo region, often sharing the same fields, so not only are we eating something that is quite common in Portugal, we are eating something from this very part of the country. I guess it really is Carnalentejana after all.
I’m not going to lie. While I try everything, beef tongue is not my favourite thing in the world. But given that until not that long ago I didn’t even eat meat – at least not meat that wasn’t in cured form or from the sea – I give myself kudos for giving it a go.
While I like to give almost all foods a go, I believe that being into food does not mean that you try the strangest thing on your travels. It doesn’t mean you eat every part of the animal as some kind of token like you are ticking things off on the checklist to say, “Yeah, I’ve done that”.
Being into food is a deeper appreciation of the food itself. It’s about appreciating the stories behind it. The tradition. The people who created it.
I can’t eat bread and wheat flour, but I can still marvel at a loaf of bread that is unique to a region, even though I don’t eat it. But I digress. Let’s move on to dessert.
After a day full of food, a highlight of which was a three-course lunch (four, if you include the appetisers that were had before going actually inside the restaurant) it’s incredible that I’ve even come this far. But the chef tonight has done a wonderful job at creating a varied and interesting meal, but light. I don’t feel stuffed, just comfortable, and I am up for the last course.
And At Last, The Dessert
This is my third dessert in Alentejo and the third time that the dessert features none other than oranges. There is orange puree, orange sorbet and orange pieces on top of almond cake. In fact, my plate displays oranges in seven different ways, the perfect fresh end to a long meal.
By the end of the meal, I’d journeyed through Alentjos cuisine and most typical ingredients. And while I’m just as happy finding local mom and pop type eateries, this was not only a feast for the senses, but also a unique way to learn about the cuisine from this central Portuguese region, the cozinha alentejana.
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