Cook in Porto with a Local Chef

The Cook in Porto with a Local Chef experience spans four hours and combines a morning market visit with a subsequent cooking session in a Porto kitchen. The experience begins at Mercado de Bolhão on Rua Formosa, Porto's recently restored 1914 iron-and-glass market, where a local chef leads participants through the stalls selecting seasonal produce, choosing the day's fish from the fishmonger, and picking cheese and presunto for the starter course. The market visit typically lasts 45 to 60 minutes and functions as a guided mini-introduction to northern Portuguese food traditions.

Back in the kitchen — typically a domestic or studio cooking space in Porto's historic centre — participants prepare three dishes over approximately three hours. The francesinha sauce is the signature preparation: the complex reduction of beer, tomato, piri piri, and meat stock that makes Porto's iconic sandwich one of the most flavourful dishes in Portugal. Participants learn the long-cooking technique and the balance of ingredients that distinguishes a proper francesinha sauce from shortcut versions.

Arroz de pato — duck rice, a traditional Portuguese one-pot dish in which the duck is braised, shredded, and baked with the cooking liquid absorbed into the rice, finished with chouriço slices on top — is the main course. The chef demonstrates how the duck fat enriches the rice during oven-baking and explains the regional variations in seasoning across Portugal.

Doce de ovos, the intensely sweet egg custard with Moorish culinary origins that is popular across Portugal, concludes the meal on a sweet note. Its simplicity — eggs, sugar, and patience — belies the technique required to achieve the correct smooth consistency.

The experience closes with participants eating the meal together. Groups are small (maximum 8) to keep the kitchen session interactive. The class is conducted in English.