Let's talk about food!

This is not a text about food lovers but rather about a city that loves cuisine. People from Porto cherish their traditional food, which was passed through generations and has an historic precedent, as is the case of Tripas à Moda do Porto and it is a fact that Porto's love of tripe has earned its people the epithet tripeiros, as in "those who eat tripe".

Porto's passion of tripe goes back to the 15th century, when Infante Dom Henrique, the son of King João I, was a great navigator. He set sail from Porto in 1415 with a fleet of dozens of boats to conquer the autonomous Spanish city Ceuta, on the African coast of the Mediterranean.

Such endeavour required an enormous effort ship provision wise; so, locals wanted to help, and slew, sliced, smoked, and crammed lambs, pigs, and oxen to be stored in the ship's hull. But not all was sent to accompany the brave sailors; the tripe was left behind and, as the saying goes, "want not waste not", the locals came up with a way of eating the leftovers. And so tripas à moda do Porto are now at everyone's lunch or dinner table and it is a token of the goodwill and imagination of people from Porto.

Tip: the tile panel by Jorge Colaço (1864-1942) at the S. Bento Station portrays Infante D. Henrique in the conquest of Ceuta.