Food and Grace

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This restaurant may not date to 1143, but this city does. We dine in Salto O Muro in Matosinhos, just north of Port, in Portugal. Literally translated Salto O Muro is “to jump the wall,” referring to fishermen from a time long ago, who, arriving in the port with their catch (after days or weeks, working their boats), would jump over the wall adjacent to the boats, ravenous for food. Outside each of the restaurants that line the street overlooking the harbor, stands an open grill, a large metal rectangle on four skinny legs (like a farm trough on stilts). Each basin, beneath the grill, glows with embers.

We chose to eat where we would be the only Americans.
We chose to eat things we would (or could) not eat at home.
Cabrito (baby goat) with roasted chestnuts
Robalo (Atlantic bass)
Polvo (octopus)
Bacalhau (salt cod)
Sardinha (sardines — in the photo)
Cozedo a Portugess (Platters of meat with potatoes and cabbage and onions)
A shrimp and dogfish risotto
And, of course, nightly vinho do porto (port wine)
We savored the custom of dining late, and lingering at the meal.
And we took great pleasure in exploration. In a small village in the north of Portugal, only a few kilometers from Spain, a restaurant proprietor asked, perplexed, “You are just driving around here?” As in. . .are you lost?
Oh yes. . .lost in a very good way.
In travel we expand ourselves. And this I believe: When the world is larger, we make space for greater measures of grace.
(Note: I wrote this post at the beginning of the week, when I did not have computer access. . .in northern Portugal.)

Grateful, for every little piece of sweetness I have known. Kris Kristofferson