Answered by Alison Fagan from Evora, Portugal 798 days ago

If you want to eat typical Portuguese fare, the best places to go are the ones that often have the old men playing cards outside and no name on. Often in these family run affairs the mother or grandmother does the cooking. Be warned, typical Portuguese food does not always look glam but it's usually delicious. A lot of the food is very heavy and comes with rice and chips and bread!!
The Portuguese Gazpacho with grilled sardines is delicious. In fact most things with their sardines are delicious but their gazpacho is not smooth like the Spanish one. Their soups are very good and generally rich enough to suffice as a meal. Portions are huge. Acorda is a sort of bread soup, there's loads of bread in it and sometimes it will be served in a bowl made of bread. Personally I find it too heavy form the warmer months. The local freshly made sheep's cheeses are excellent and the wine is also very good. A lot of the desserts are almond, egg, cinnamon and vanilla based so quite custardy but gorgeous.
If you travel a bit further north of the Algarve to the area of Alentejo around Comporta where the Paddy fields are a good restaurant is "The Rice Museum" also there are a few loungy/trendy places at Comporta beach itself which serve good seafood and a more modernised version of Portuguese cuisine. The food is often quite heavily coriander flavoured so if you're not a fan avoid things with "Coentras" in them. Up around SInes and Santiago do Cacem you will find lots of good little local fish restaurants and the coastal drive is very scenic with lots of god hidden beaches on the way. In Many of these towns there's little restaurants on the beach and the fishermen come directly from their boats and sell you the fish right there for the restaurant to cook up immediately.
In general the Algarve is hit and miss as it's geared at a very touristic market. Try to avoid places with touristic menus and pictures of the food (a universal rule when travelling I suppose) Eating in the Pousada's is a great experience, the food normally organic, locally sourced and the setting's spectacular in their own right. For a list of these see http://www.pousadasofportugal.com/

I hope this helps, sorry I haven't been more name specific about places but often village bars are just called bar or cafe or Antonio's nothing much more!!

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