What are the most popular, typical or famous foods of Portugal?

The Portuguese stew, called Cozido à Portuguesa, is a popular food in Portugal. It has all meat from pork, veal, and cow, and a lot of cabbage, carrots.  It’s a very rich and heavy meal that is a typical meal for winter in Portugal.
 
Not only women make this meal; everyone does. For example, in my house, I do it. People or families will make it slightly differently.
 
Then we have the barbecue fish, which we call Peixe na Grelha, which is basically just...

The Portuguese stew, called Cozido à Portuguesa, is a popular food in Portugal. It has all meat from pork, veal, and cow, and a lot of cabbage, carrots.  It’s a very rich and heavy meal that is a typical meal for winter in Portugal.
 
Not only women make this meal; everyone does. For example, in my house, I do it. People or families will make it slightly differently.
 
Then we have the barbecue fish, which we call Peixe na Grelha, which is basically just fresh fish on the barbecue. We just grill the fish, and it comes with stewed vegetables. We typically use sole fish, sardines, Rodalo. But the most famous is sardines, our grilled sardines.
 
And then we have another one, which is Arroz de Marisco, which is basically rice and seafood. This contains shrimp, lobster, octopus, calamares, and crab all mixed in a big pan and  cooked with wine, tomato, onions, and pepper; a lot of ingredients. And then the rice is cooked with the sauce of that stew. It’s a wonderful, shellfish rice.
 
The food is one of the main features in Portugal. We take it really, really seriously. If you cook something in a microwave in Portugal, people will get offended with you. There are restaurants in Portugal where you have to go by yourself in the kitchen and fetch cutlery and the plate and the cups and put it on the table. 
 
In Portugal we have Gourmet 3 Michelin Star restaurants and you have these restaurants where you feel at home that you walk into the kitchen, talk to the cook, choose fish, you tell him exactly what vegetables you want, you don’t want the ones that are in the menu, you choose them, and you bring your plates and your cups from the cupboard and you put it on top of your table. So we take food very seriously in Portugal. Not only that, we don’t have a meal in half an hour; we have a meal in two and a half hours… with a lot of wine and a lot of conversation.

 

(Salad menu at Blue Hostel and Suites, Cascais, Portugal, pictured.)