We spent 4 nights in Porto before boarding the Emerald Radiance for a 7 night cruise on the Douro river. Every meal was good value and a couple were outstanding. I’ll save the best for my next post.

For our first night we wanted a restaurant within an easy walk of our hotel, the Editory Boulevard Aliados.

Quattro, an Italian restaurant had good reviews and didn’t disappoint.

A few cocktails, some breadsticks, olives and marinara before very good pasta and pizza.

The restaurant was Italian but the wine was Portuguese, from Alentejano and it was excellent. So good it called for a second bottle

We were winging it for our 2nd night but wanted Portuguese and I was ready for some bacalao.

We found Vaccarum. Known for Francesinhas, Porto’s famous hot meat and tomato gravy sandwich. One of our group tried and loved it. The rest don’t eat much meat and I just wanted cod. They had good cod fritters but my cornmeal crusted cod with potatoes and spinach was the winner.

Reservations were in place for the next night at Elebe Centro. There are several Elebe locations, Centro was walking distance up a steep hill in a lively neighborhood.

The food was good but the wine experience was the big hit.

We had a great start to our trip and a long day tour to Braga and Guimaraes ahead thé next day so wound our way back down to our hotel passing this lively square on the way.