A week of breakfasts in Porto
Seven mornings, seven cafés, and why the best one served nothing but toast, butter and very strong coffee.
I set myself one rule for a week in Porto: breakfast somewhere new every morning, and never the place the hotel recommended.
The toast
The best of the seven served toast, salted butter and a galão in a glass. Nothing else. The bread came from the bakery two doors down at seven each morning, and the owner cut it in thick slices on a board behind the counter.
The pastries
Every café sold pastéis de nata. Only two made their own, and you could tell: the custard set but still soft in the middle, the pastry shattering when you bit it.
What I would tell an editor
The story is not the pastry everyone photographs. It is the bakeries behind the cafés, and the four people who still bake before dawn in the old town.