Where to eat in the Algarve, Portugal

Café Correia in Vila do Bispo

Vila do Bispo is growing on us!  The “county” town for the most western part of the Algarve is a very small, very Portuguese place near the end of the EN125 towards Sagres. There is a smart new Finance office, an older town hall and a maze of quaint narrow streets lined by traditional Portuguese houses. It seems, when walking round, that there is an amazing number of restaurants and cafés for such a small place, probably supported by the civil service working for the Camara.

Attracted by the waft of garlic and a large crowd seen at lunchtime, we decided to try the Café Correia on Rua 1 Maio, next to the Post Office and opposite the very pretty church. This is a true Portuguese restaurant with a bar at one end and lots of dark wood everywhere.  The café seats about 30 people, many of the meals are for two people and everything arrives in a cooking pot from which you serve yourself into a bowl.  A word of warning!  Everything is cooked fresh from basics and you are alerted in the menu that it may take 40-50 minutes before your main course will be ready.  Ours took well over an hour but was worth waiting for!

There's another thing that you need to get your head round before a visit to Café Correia - you really are not eating there for anything other than the main course which, incidentally, is ample for all appetites. There is a traditional couvert of bread, butter, soft cheese and sardine paté but starters are severely limited to vegetable and fish soup. I took the vegetable option and it proved to be large and delicious, actually the best I've ever had. Unfortunately, on this evening, there was no fish (which goes to prove that it is all fresh!) so the choice of main courses was limited to the meat and shellfish dishes. Two of our party had octopus rice, two had shrimp pasta and one had chicken with tomato and fried potato slices. The house wine, both red and white, is an Alentejo Borba but the wine list is huge. There were two pages of Douros alone but, as usual, we chose the house wine and, as usual, we were not disappointed. The main courses arrived in their cooking pots, the portions were enormous and all agreed that they had one of the tastiest meals ever.

The Chef, who was the only one working in the kitchen and did his own washing up, appeared himself and asked our opinion on the meal, always a nice touch. We saw one or two nice looking puddings going out but by then we were full so none were taken. The whole bill for 5 of us including 3 bottles of wine was 99 Euros. Café Correia comes highly recommended for those who wish to sample true, traditional Portuguese cooking in a local café -  we shall certainly be going again!

The proprietor told us it was not necessary to book when we called in the day before (we went in early October 2008) but he had set up a table for us anyway, which was a nice touch. Café Correia is closed on Saturdays and open lunchtimes from 1 - 3pm and from 7pm in the evening.  Local telephone number is 282 639 127 - put 00351 in front, as usual, if you are phoning on a non Portuguese mobile.

John  

If you would like to know more about Portuguese Food and Drink, why don't you dip into our Restaurants in the Algarve section and our series of articles on Portuguese Wines and Ports.  We also feature some Traditional Portuguese Recipes and a glossary of useful Portuguese food & drink words and phrases