SLOW FOOD AND SLOW TRAVEL IN PORTUGAL: A GUIDE TO MEANINGFUL CULINARY ADVENTURES

Born in Italy during the 1980s, the Slow Food movement began as an essential resistance against the rapid rise of fast food and the erosion of traditional culinary heritage. It advocates for “good, clean and fair” food, emphasizing sustainability, biodiversity, and ethical production methods that benefit consumers, producers, and the environment. Beyond gastronomy alone, Slow Food has grown into a global phenomenon, promoting mindful eating and also deeper connections with local communities, heritage, and culture.

The principles of Slow Food naturally inspired a broader philosophy known as Slow Travel. This travel style invites explorers to slow down, engage authentically with local environments, and savor experiences rather than merely checking items off a tourist checklist. Slow Travel perfectly aligns with the ideals of the Slow Food movement, transforming journeys into opportunities to appreciate the traditions of a given place, with as much nuance as possible.

In Portugal, Slow Food and Slow Travel come together beautifully, shaped profoundly by the country’s incredible culinary diversity and rich cultural heritage. The founder of Oh! My Cod, Silvia Olivença, besides being a passionate foodie with an intense appreciation for Portuguese culture and cuisine, is also an anthropologist and clinical psychologist. Born and raised in Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest neighborhood, Silvia combines her anthropological insights and dedication to the Slow Food movement to craft uniquely immersive experiences that connect travelers to Portugal’s authentic flavors and communities.

Portugal offers ideal conditions for Slow Travel. The country is fairly compact yet with a vast array of regional cuisines and traditional practices preserved across generations, not only in the Portuguese mainland, but also in the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores. Experiences such as those curated by Oh! My Cod provide meaningful encounters that go far beyond typical tourism, through the connection with places and people.

Foodways: eating as anthropology

Foodways are the cultural, social, and historical practices related to food preparation, consumption, and sharing. These are essential pathways into the soul of any community.

Anthropologist Silvia Olivença recognizes foodways as critical entry points for understanding local identities, histories, and social dynamics. Through her approach, travelers discover what locals eat but, more importantly than that, why they eat it, how traditions have evolved, and the deeper meanings associated with dishes and practices.

In Portugal, the foodways are layered, reflecting centuries of historical interactions, migrations, and trade. Whether it’s understanding how North African influences permeate Lisbon’s spice markets, exploring how rural communities in Minho maintain ancient rituals of making bread, or exploring the maritime culture that has shared the Azorean palate, foodways tell and show a lot about Portugal’s cultural identity. By engaging directly with local producers, fishermen (and fisherwomen!), farmers, and cooks, travelers gain insights that transcend culinary pleasure, as they hear the stories of adaptation and celebration linked to Portuguese meals.

At Oh! My Cod Food and Cultural Tours, our commitment to foodways, food and beverages with a strong sense of place, and Slow Food principles comes organically from our personal passion, both of our founder and team of local food experts and cultural mediators. Rather than designing tours and then seeking experiences, our journeys begin naturally, driven by genuine curiosity and the desire to connect authentically with local communities. It’s only after immersing ourselves in places, foods, and traditions that we thoughtfully create travel experiences to share with others.

This approach, emphasizing sustainability and respectful engagement, earned Oh! My Cod the prestigious Prémio Nacional de Turismo 2024 award, distinguishing our immersive gastronomic experiences even among Michelin-starred competitors. For us, this isn’t just theory! It’s a deeply personal and genuine way of exploring and sharing Portugal’s culinary heritage, with mindful travelers who visit us.

Eating with purpose: the benefits of Slow Food experiences

Engaging in Slow Food experiences offers travelers far more than sensory pleasure. It also provides a profound connection to people, traditions, and the land itself. By getting as immersed as possible in local food cultures, travelers can actively participate in preserving culinary traditions and biodiversity. Through interactions with farmers, artisans, chefs, and community members, travelers can become storytellers themselves, sharing firsthand narratives of the cultures they encounter, and eventually bringing back these stories to their own corners of the world.

The Slow Food philosophy inherently supports small-scale producers, artisanal methods, and sustainable agriculture, benefiting local economies and helping conserve biodiversity. By choosing seasonal, locally sourced products, travelers contribute directly to environmental sustainability, reducing food miles and carbon footprints, and promoting more ethical consumption practices. Specific Slow Food experiences in Portugal are a materialization of these benefits. For instance, joining a local farmer in Alentejo to learn about organic olive oil production not only enriches travelers’ understanding of the region’s traditions but directly supports sustainable agriculture. Similarly, participating in seafood preservation workshops in the Azores provides deeper insight into maritime heritage while additionally promoting more eco-friendly fishing practices.

In a rapidly changing world, frequent travel inevitably leaves its mark on the environment. By recognizing this reality we don’t mean to discourage anyone from traveling! Instead, we would like to highlight the importance of making conscientious choices when we plan our trips. Opting for Slow Travel and Slow Food experiences seems like a responsible decision, as you can travel while also supporting local economies, encouraging sustainable practices, and even fostering cultural resilience. Such experiences end up valuing social sustainability, ensuring that local communities thrive alongside tourism rather than becoming overwhelmed by it.

Ultimately, the future of our planet and the vitality of local cultures are also greatly dependent on the choices we make as travelers. By embracing Slow Travel and Slow Food philosophies, travelers can actively contribute to positive change, turning tourism from a potential burden into a powerful force for global good.

Portugal: Europe’s ultimate Slow Food destination

Few countries capture the essence of Slow Food travel as organically as Portugal. With its compact territory and stunning diversity of landscapes, Portugal offers an unparalleled variety of regional foodways and cultural expressions that reward those who take their time.

This diversity is not accidental. Portugal has been largely spared from the physical destruction of major wars, which allowed its culinary and agricultural traditions to evolve uninterrupted across generations. Its geographic isolation, bordered by Spain on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, also contributed to safeguarding Portugal’s gastronomic traditions. It’s no surprise that, despite modernization of our society on all fronts, some local knowledge, particularly related with agriculture and food, is still passed down orally, and many artisanal practices remain rooted in pre-industrial techniques. Our apiculture and honey tasting experience in Pico, is a good example of that.

This living heritage is beautifully documented in the Slow Food Foundation’s “Ark of Taste”, which lists dozens of Portuguese food products at risk of disappearing. Through our work, travelers get to sample some of these rare foods, while also engaging with the people who grow and protect them.

Take, for instance, the rare São Jorge Island Cheese, one of Portugal’s iconic Ark of Taste entries. Produced exclusively on São Jorge Island in the Azores, this cheese is renowned for its distinctive spicy and tangy notes, a result of the island’s lush volcanic pastures and ancestral cheese making techniques. Those joining Oh! My Cod’s curated culinary trips to São Jorge Island get to taste this delicious cheese, while also engaging with the artisanal cheesemakers, learning firsthand about traditional production methods and their role in maintaining the island’s cultural heritage.

On the Portuguese mainland, the Alentejo region offers another Ark of Taste gem: vinho da talha. Crafted through an ancient Roman technique of fermenting grapes in giant clay amphorae known locally as “talhas”, this wine embodies Slow Food’s ideals of preservation, tradition, and sense of place. We are preparing multi-day culinary and wine trips in Portugal that will provide an insight into practises that have been around for centuries, such as this one, inviting travelers to explore wineries that have been used generation after generation, and that very rarely make it into the travel plans of even the most curious foodie travelers, simply because these are places that aren’t all that well-known or easy to reach.

Further north, in the Douro region, the heritage fruit known as Bravo de Esmolfe apple showcases yet another example of Portugal’s Slow Food treasures. This unique, aromatic apple is grown exclusively in a small territory in northern Portugal, liked for its crispness and sweet yet subtly spicy aroma. Our trips can also include visits to orchards and local markets, promoting meaningful encounters between travelers and farmers who are committed to preserving our edible heritage. By visiting producers such as this, we are all contributing with economic support which, travel tales aside, is of course essential for their survival.

Seafood lovers will easily find their place within Portugal’s extensive coastline and particularly in the Azorean archipelago. Besides fish, the islands are also prime spots for farm-to-table experiences, where you can explore local products from the land as well as seafood delicacies. These products from the sea are also prominently featured in Oh My Cod’s Umami & Garum Seafood Lisbon Tour, which has a particular focus on seafood that has been preserved using ancient conservation methods, resulting in appetizing things like muxama, bottarga, and garum.

Portugal’s Ark of Taste also includes artisanal breads like broa de Avintes, a dense, hearty rye and maize bread from northern Portugal, and legumes like the chícharo, an ancient legume cultivated in the Serra de Aire and Candeeiros region. We may eat ingredients such as these during our tours but, more than tasting them, we are celebrating them as part of Portugal’s culinary heritage! Ultimately, the experiences curated by Oh My Cod connect travelers to regional communities, helping to sustain traditions which are being threatened by mass consumption patterns.

Our food-inspired journeys are designed to be mindful and respectful, going beyond superficial tourism. If as a traveler you want to become more than just an observer of the place you are visiting, we invite you to participate actively in maintaining these traditions through meaningful economic and cultural exchanges.

Ultimately, Slow Food experiences in Portugal exemplify a commitment to sustainability. And this isn’t just environmental sustainability that we are referring to, but also economic and cultural! Ingredients always carry a story of the place and its people. So, as you Slow Travel in Portugal, the tastings you get to enjoy are an opportunity to understand the landscape, the past and, if we look into things carefully as well, to even begin to glimpse the future of food as well.

Immersive culinary experiences: discovering Portugal through Slow Travel

To discover Portugal through Slow Travel is to choose encounters over itineraries, and depth over speed. It’s about connecting travelers and locals in a way that feels more like a shared table than a transaction, something which is unfortunately always the case in the world of mass tourism. Unlike itineraries that skim the surface, immersive culinary experiences demand time, curiosity, and a willingness to be transformed… not just entertained! At Oh! My Cod, our experiences are shaped by this mindset: to go slow is to go deeper.

In Lisbon, the capital might feel busy at first glance, but it nonetheless still holds hidden layers of tradition. On our most popular Lisbon food tour, guests wander through Alfama and Mouraria, sampling foods that carry generations of family history. One moment you might be tasting a cherished recipe for Portugal’s beloved salted cod, the next hearing about colonial histories and migrations that shaped Portugal’s eclectic palate. Along the way, you’ll encounter dishes not found on the regular menu, but specially prepared for our experiences, precisely to best illustrate the local heritage.

In the Azores, our longer trips invite travelers to settle into the rhythm of island life. On Pico Island, we have curated a four-day Culinary Journey with Independent Wine Producers. This journey unfolds among UNESCO-protected vineyards and volcanic coastlines. There, travelers don’t hop from site to site. Instead, they stay, they taste, they listen. Winegrowers share how lava rock walls protect vines from salty winds. Fishermen describe their ancient techniques for fish catching and preservation, and cooks such as our very own Pico Private Chef Natacha Dias, prepares recipes that are inspired by local traditions, while blending in inspirations from the wider world. This is how we broaden the narrative: by first focusing on local elements, and then widening to the wider world; while also welcoming travelers and their world-wide perspectives, and then narrowing them down on how they can possibly relate to what’s happening at a local level. We could say that, while enjoying incredible food, we also talk about the state of the world.

Back on the mainland, experiences like our Sustainable Chefs Tour also push the conversation further. These experiences make transformation even more important than nostalgia, something that in the world of food isn’t always the case. We pose real questions, such as for example how can we celebrate tradition while adapting to actual planetary limits? Or what role can tourism play in advocating for plant-forward eating, ethical sourcing (particularly of animal protein), and minimal waste? On these tours, we eat thoughtfully, discuss openly, and hope everyone leaves inspired.

We bring guests to markets where vendors still know the names of their farmers. To kitchens where ancient methods (like fermentation, smoking and drying), are being reimagined by chefs with a conscience. To hands-on workshops where food becomes a tool for connection, not just consumption. We prioritize authenticity, small scale, and shared learning, ensuring every experience is meaningful for travelers, while also beneficial to locals.

Choosing to travel this way is more than a lifestyle preference. We would go as far as to say that it is a (small) act of resistance against uniformity and speed. It’s a way of saying that people matter more than products, and that taste is more than flavor: it’s also geography, rituals and memories! By slowing down in Portugal, you will get to eat differently, but also see, listen and connect differently. We sincerely hope that every dish and wine you sample in our country, as well as the people you meet along the way, add a layer to your understanding of this beautiful place we are so lucky to call home.

Slow down, savor more

In a world that moves too fast, choosing to slow down is a bit of a radical act. The way we see it, slowing down doesn’t for sure mean missing out! On the contrary, it means experiencing more deeply, more richly, and more meaningfully. It means stepping into the kitchens, vineyards, and fields where stories are born and told. It means looking someone in the eye as they hand you a plate and tell you where it came from, and why it matters.

Slow Food and Slow Travel aren’t trends. They’re a mindset. A commitment to making conscious choices that nourish not just the body, but the communities and ecosystems all around us. And Portugal, with its living traditions, passionate producers, and a strong culinary identity, is the perfect place to begin.

So the question now is simple: are you ready to savor something extraordinary?

Come hungry for flavor, for connection, and also for meaning.

Start planning your Slow Food-inspired adventure with us today!