We came for a few days off. We left with a domain name.

Mat, Dave and Tom arriving in Porto, mid-selfie in a colourfully painted corridor — MAT, DAVE & TOM — 4 OCTOBER 2023, ARRIVALS DAY

It started over a plate of sardines, not a business plan. Dave, Tom and I went to Porto for a long weekend in October 2023, and by the last night the whole trip had been hijacked by charcoal smoke.

Friday: a passport and a plan to eat everything

On the Friday we went tapas-hopping — a small paper passport with five sticker slots, one for every stop — and spent the day working through Matosinhos' tapas trail one petisco at a time. We filled it without trying very hard. Numbers 19, 9, 36, 33 and 13 are stamped into a passport that's now sitting in a drawer somewhere, next to a Nortada lager glass none of us can remember packing.

Mat, Dave and Tom at a beachside table in Porto with the menus still closed, sunglasses on — A RARE MOMENT WHERE THE MENU WAS STILL CLOSED

As the light went we ended up on a rooftop — a strawberry cocktail going warm in the evening heat, the light doing something dramatic, and one of us saying the sentence that's the entire reason this website exists: "someone should just run this as a tour."

A strawberry cocktail on a rooftop table at sunset in Porto — THAT ROOFTOP, THAT SENTENCE

Saturday: the grill on the cobbles

Saturday was our last day, and we saved the best for it. We wandered through Mercado do Bolhão that afternoon, and left with none of the things you're supposed to buy at a market and all of the things you're not — a photo of a wall of hanging garlic, a bag of dried chillies nobody asked for, a long conversation about which stall smelled the best.

Strings of onions and dried chillies hanging over the produce stalls at Mercado do Bolhão in Porto — MERCADO DO BOLHÃO, SATURDAY AFTERNOON

Then we headed to Afurada, the fishing village on the south bank of the Douro that's known for its grilled fish, and found a place with braziers set up right on the cobbles outside the front door — Taberna São Pedro, on Rua Costa Goodolfim. Not a barbecue tucked round the back, but grills glowing on the actual street, fish sizzling in full view of anyone walking past. Whole dourada, a stack of sardinhas, tiger prawns still curled from the heat, a steak the size of a dinner plate. Olive oil came straight off the table in a tin, poured over everything without ceremony. We ate off plates stamped with the taberna's own name in blue script, at a table that had long stopped being tidy.

An overhead view of a table at Taberna São Pedro in Afurada, loaded with grilled fish, prawns, steak, rice, salad and olives — THE TABLE, MID-DEMOLITION

It was the best meal of the trip, and it's the one every stop on this site gets measured against.

So we bought the domain. That's as far as it's gone — no bookings, no dates, no itinerary you can actually pay for yet. Just a website, a growing list of the places worth going back to, and an Instagram we're actually posting to while we work out what this becomes.

Help us find out

Would you take this tour?

If you'd join a guided seafood and tapas trail in Porto, bring a group, or want to be part of it, tell us. Or just follow along — grills, stickers and market hauls, posted as we find them.