Vegan Porto Guide

I have just had a short break in Porto, Portugal and found it to be a very vegan friendly city. From traditional food like Pastel de Nata and Francesinha to favourites like burgers and burritos there is something for everyone. Here is my Vegan Porto Guide.

daTerra

The first stop in my Vegan Porto Guide is daTerra, is a chain of Vegan buffet restaurants with multiple outlets in Porto. I was so lucky that we stayed across the road from their Baixa restaurant. If we had stayed in Porto longer I would definitely have been back! We had the lunch buffet and I was so happy to see the place fill up and be thriving on a Tuesday lunch time.

For the lunch buffet it is €10.50 each which includes all of the buffet food but not drinks or desserts. You can go up as many times as you want to refill your plate so this was really good value. I also must say that I really appreciated that when you first enter the restaurant everything is explained to you.

There is a variety of different types of food including soup, hot foods such as Brazilian beans, rice and seitan and cold foods like salads. We really enjoyed being able to just pick what we wanted and it allowed us to try some new things.

Kind Kitchen

I wanted to eat at the all vegan Kind Kitchen for one thing and one thing only – vegan Francesinha. It is a traditional dish from Porto which consists of a sandwich of toasted bread and meats (in this case beyond sausage, seitan slices and a variety of different mushrooms) which is then enveloped in cheese slices. Then a hot sauce made with tomato and beer is poured over which melts the cheese. It sounds and looks quite unusual but it was really full of flavour and rich. It came with fries which help mop up the extra sauce. My husband had the chimichurri steak which was made with homemade seitan. The seitan in both meals was really tasty.

In the spirit of trying new things I also had a Pastel de Nata to take away. They are usually made with egg yolk so I was happy to see that many of the vegan places we went to had vegan versions. Now I have to be honest and say I was not looking forward to trying one but felt like it had to be done while in Portugal for the first time. We have custard tarts in England and even smelling one makes me feel sick. I don’t even know why! I’m very happy to report that the Pastel de Nata was actually very nice. I didn’t find it revolutionary but the pastry was flaky and the custard (the bit I have a problem with) was actually a really nice texture.

Apuro Bar

We actually ended up here because another place I wanted to go to was unexpectedly closed and I’m so happy it turned out this way! This vegan bar and live events space offers a menu of burritos, burgers, tapas, toasts and desserts. I really liked the vibe in here. We were there for lunch at opening time on a Thursday so I can only imagine what it’s like on a weekend evening.

I went for a Lazy Burrito with fries and my husband had the no fish burger. The burrito was full of so many different flavours including scrambled tofu, guacamole, potatoes and mango. It was really delicious, as were the fried which were seasoned really well. The ‘no fish’ was really nice too, with a subtle fish flavour.

Mamma and Papa Pizzeria

This pizzeria is located across the river from Porto in Vila Nova De Gaia and although it only had one vegan option it is worth a mention. You’ll find it in Mercado Beira-Rio, a market hall with lots of different food stands (including a branch of daTerra which I mentioned earlier). The vegan pizza has mushrooms, spinach and olives and the cheese was really good as far as vegan cheese goes because it wasn’t the kind that sticks to your mouth. The base was thin and crispy and I enjoyed all the flavours.

Overall it was really quite easy to find fully vegan places to eat in Porto and there were a lot of places that weren’t fully vegan but had vegan options. All of the places we went to were busy and that was so great to see when we are in hard times for small businesses.

If you liked this Vegan Porto Guide you might like my other guides such as Barcelona, London or Rome.