Our lost together locations

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Lagos

That's it. That's the title. Lagos. (That's Lagos, Portugal, and not the one in Africa.)

As our hostel owner said, there's not much to do in Lagos but eat, drink, and hang out on the beach or do watersports.

So we did (everything but the watersports -- it's November, after all).

First, we sought out a beach. We found one. For some time, it seemed we were the only ones to find it that day. Then some other people came along. But in the meantime, there was only the sounds of the waves and the gulls. And us.

The sand was golden, the sky blue, the sun warm, the water... not too cold. (I didn't swim, though I might have if there hadn't been what seemed to be a respectable undertow. I just waded.)



Then, later, we went for dinner. Again, at the recommendation of our hostel owner, we sought out a local favourite where the two specialties we were told to ask for were prawns in the house sauce and a large dish of pork and clams. The former was apparently no secret -- we sat next to the open kitchen and a steady stream of platters filled with huge, saucy prawns came off the counter. We found them amazingly tasty, if salty.

When you order the second dish, the waiter laughs and warns you that there's a lot of food. No, really, a lot of food. Like, more than enough for two people (even though it's only priced at about 9 Euros, which is the standard price range for a single entree). We protested that David could eat his way through almost anything -- the night before we'd had two whole fishes (a grilled seabass and a grilled silver bream... mmmm...) and at a churrasquiera in Lisbon we'd had a whole grilled chicken plus a dish of spare ribs (though that had been shortly following my gastro issues, and I was, no exaggeration, starving).

The waiter shrugged and put the dish on the order. When it came up behind David on the counter, my eyes widened. "That's a LOT of food," I hissed. He glanced up over his shoulder. "Mmm-hmm."

To our table came a heap of saucy, salty, oily pork cubes, sausage, clams, potatoes, pickled cauliflower and carrot, and small black olives. We stared at it. We poked at it with our forks. We even ate some. It was delicious (if salty -- are you sensing a theme yet?).

At some point, David sat back, looked at the plate, and said, "Have we eaten any of this?" There was still a heap of saucy, salty, oily pork cubes, sausage, and potatoes (we had picked through the clams, veggies and olives by this point).

Laughing, the waiter wrapped it up for us. It's sitting in the hostel's fridge at the moment, and will make a good brunch all fried up again.



Chef grinned at us from behind his counter, madly flipping salty-meaty-seafoody ingredients in his pan and setting bursts of oil on fire for the benefit of me and my camera.


David watched, thoroughly enjoying the show.



After so much excitement (and food), all we could do was go to sleep. So we did.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

5 comments:

The 40 Year Old Father said...

It was really good, and GREAT value for the money! If you're going to Lagos, I'd say it's a "must go". I would suggest reservations, since it's only got seating for less than 40 people. They're closed on Sundays.

Since I'm a heathen peasant, I ordered a dry red. That was 9 euros. It was REALLY nice. All-in-all a really solid (and salty) meal, with a soup and salad, for 34 euros. Taxes and tip in there too.

So that's bread/butter, soup, salad, prawns, clams and pork, and a bottle of wine for about $50 CDN.

Nice.

VERY NICE INDEED!!!

The staff were great, and the chef (owner?) seemed to be having a really good time in the kitchen, where there was no room for anyone else.

Jake Disman said...

Jeez, that made me hungry!

Anonymous said...

Pedro Sanches said... (i`ll have to register myself I know!!! :P)
Good choice on the wine. All the wines from the Alentejo region (right up north of the Algarve) are VERY GOOD. My guess is you were at Dona Ana`s beach, wich is a VERY NICE beach. Now imagine yourselfs in that beach with 32ºC, water 24ºC, with a cold SUPER BOCK on the side and getting a sunburn!!! What else do you want in life? That`s enough for the brits and germans, so they say!!! :P

Jodi said...

Pedro -- so glad your cousin insisted we visit the Algarve. If nothing else, we ate fabulously every day! But yeah... I can imagine that beach would be amazing in the summer (and it was indeed Dona Ana beach) -- but a LOT busier!

The 40 Year Old Father said...

Not to mention that it was vinho verde and port that we had by our side!