We just finished the last gig of our 2013 European tour in the city of Porto, Portugal which is not an easy place to get to by train. We had to take an overnight train from Catalonia Spain and we arrived on the day of our gig at 10 in the morning a little out of sorts. It wasn’t long until we revived ourselves with a great lunch which included a bowl of soup, sardines, pork escalopini, beans and rice, fresh fruit, and a carafe of wine. The feast was followed by a much needed nap.
We went to do our sound check at Cafe Lusitano around six and were greeted by our host and sound engineer Miguel who warmly welcomed us and gave us an awesome sound and lights check. After the sound check Miguel took us out to eat at a Portugal style tapas restaurant where we ate like 15 dishes and drank a few bottles of wine and ended the meal with great coffees.
Cafe Lusitano is a really hip fashionable bar that has great drinks, really cool lights, and great sound. Porto is not an early gig kind of place, even on a Wednesday. By midnight a crowd showed up and we played our music to an enthusiastic group of hip people.
The rest of the time in Porto we spent eating more great food, drinking port wine, walking to the beach, and marveling at the beauty of the city. The new drink that we learned to make is what locals drink: port and tonic. It is not made with the old deep dark sweet port wine but with a white port wine which they call dry, but is really semi-dry to a wine drinkers taste. Here is the recipe:
Port and Tonic
1 part white port (We had Taylor’s chip dry white port)
2 parts tonic water
5 mint leaves
ice
