Too Close for Comfort?

I grew up in a well-known city which has always attracted visitors from all over the world. My gang of friends and I knew every stone, every gateway and (especially) every gargoyle and, for us, they all had their own stories. These stories, though, were quite different from the stories that the visitors knew and it would be from them we learned, for example, that the arched gateway with the statue over the top was started in the 15th century and finished in the 16th. For us, it was the gateway where Jim had once had a pee and been caught by one of those busybody bulldogs in bowler hats and got a clout around the ear to go with his wet boots.

Eating out

Fast forward to last week. We've been eating out at just about every restaurant within a one-hour drive from home for years. There are hundreds of them but the one we'd never been to was the closest. It's the only restaurant in our Freguesia and we'd walked and driven past countless times, though for ages never even realised its purpose as there are no signs and they don't advertise their trade. It was a chance remark by the local carpenter, who has his workshop nearby, that led us to enlightenment about this ordinary looking house set back from the road. Nevertheless, it'd been about ten years since we discovered this little gem of information and still we hadn't even thought about going there for a meal. Then, one day last week, we were tootling past at lunchtime and instead of going home and rooting around the fridge for a meal, we parked up and went inside for the first time.

Loud atmosphere

It's one of those echoey places. You know the kind, with sharp, concreted surfaces which bounce the sound around so it sounds brittle and rattles in your ears. The lunchtime diners were quite shouty people too, mainly men who think that the only way to make a point and win an argument is to shout it louder than the other person. Luckily for us, although it was only just gone 12.30, lunchtime was over for the shouty men so it quickly got a lot quieter. We looked around and I took the opportunity to introduce the English word 'dingy' to the missus.

The waiter was the owner and he was rather a gruff man. He informed us that there was fried fish for lunch or, he added in a somewhat menacing tone, there's rojões - if we don't mind waiting, that is. It almost sounded like a threat and we wondered why they'd offer something they didn't want us to have. It was tempting to test this by ordering the forbidden dish but then we thought he knows people we know and that is how village feuds start, so we ordered the fish, virtuously reminding ourselves that it was Friday. We took the opportunity to ask him why they didn't advertise – no signs, not a hint that it was a place where you could eat. 'Busy enough' was his brusque answer and he sloped off to get our order, obviously not keen to dally and talk. We speculated how long we would have had to wait if we'd insisted on the rojões and decided that they probably hadn't caught the pig yet, so quite a while.

Different food pairings

The fish arrived quickly and brought with it a little puzzle. It was accompanied with freijão frade com salsa verde, which was fine and dandy as black-eyed bean salad goes well with fried food, but also with a serving of rice, the standard Portuguese Agulha variety. We both thought that odd. Feijão frade with rice? It just didn't seem right. Some pairings in food seem quite natural - fish and chips, cheese and pasta, even red beans and rice – but black-eyed bean salad in a parsley vinaigrette with warm rice? Nah. Nevertheless, we gave it a go, if only to prove to ourselves that we were right that it was wrong.

As it happened, we were both very hungry so we gobbled it all up but in the process also satisfied ourselves that we had been correct. It was not a happy mix. Curious, we said, how we instinctively knew it wouldn't work. I recalled an old friend of the family in Ireland who had insisted in his gruff Leitrimy way that this whole business of having different courses on different plates was a waste of feckin' time and that matching different flavours that go together was not for the likes of him. He set about emptying his soup, pork chop dinner plus an apple pie and custard all into one bowl and mixing it up before spooning it into his mouth, simply to prove his point to us. Good man, Jack, we all said, but later noted that he never repeated the trick. Anyway, there we were with a plate of bean salad and rice that didn't go together but we ate it anyway, just like Jack.

The long and the short of it is that we got to go to our nearest restaurant and walked away with a little story, so that's a win.

Fitch is a retired teacher trainer and academic writer who has lived in northern Portugal for over 30 years. Author of 'Rice & Chips', irreverent glimpses into Portugal, and other books. Also on Substack.

Fitch O'Connell