The atmosphere is club-like, drinkers line the bar, football scores are chalked on a blackboard, a vendor tours the room selling not flowers, but lottery tickets. As throughout Portugal, the coffee is top notch. This first meal in Portugal turns out to be an archetype. Hors d'oeuvres are universal, we discover, offered with bread for a small cover charge. They may include slivers of Portuguese dry smoked ham cured in paprika, slices of little dry sheep or cow cheeses, and sardines pickled with onion, peppers and orange.
Main courses emphasise pork and the game which is in season, partridge, wild boar and hare.
They come in dark, powerful sauces that are rich with wine and pungent with garlic, onion, bay leaf, smoked bacon, paprika, and sometimes Tabasco. The pork dishes vary from region to region. My favorite was ' porco con ameijoas, ' piquant pork with the little Venus clams familiar in Italian 'spaghetti alla vongole'. Portugal rejoices in 500 miles of Atlantic coastline. No town is more than l50 miles from the shore, so no wonder fish features large on every table.