Oranges had originally been a huge wealth-generating crop on São Miguel, but a blight that arrived in 1860 forced growers to look to other crops, like pineapple, tobacco and sugar beets. Arruda pineapple plantation to see the fruits growing in greenhouses and purchase pineapple liqueur and other products.
On São Miguel island, the largest of the nine, you can visit the A. Pineapples, bananas, and passion fruit (oh my) are just some of the tropical fruits growing in the Azores’ astoundingly fertile microclimates. Pineapples growing in a greenhouse on São Miguel island. If you find restaurant that has it, order it - word is it’s exceedingly delicate and tender. And “we have great lobster,” says Rocha, referring to a local variety known as cavaco that I heard about but never managed to track down. Track them down at Beira Mar restaurant in the village of São Mateus or Cais de Angra in Angra do Heroismo. Your efforts are rewarded with the taste, which is sweet and briny and precisely of the sea, like the best crab you’ve ever tried. These are boiled in seawater and served chilled, with a small prying device that looks like a piece of dental equipment. On Terceira island, you can find a kind of barnacle known as cracas (CRAH-cush) (not to be confused with percebes, or gooseneck barnacles, from mainland Portugal), which easily could be mistaken for chunks of rocks. (A local I spoke with on São Jorge told me it’s also popular with his crowd to eat them raw.) “Limpets are the most known,” says Rocha, referring to a kind of sea snail known locally as lapas (LAHP-ahsh), that’s usually served grilled, in a sauce of butter, garlic, and spicy red pepper. Leopard-print moray eels get the breaded, deep-fried treatment and hit the plate hot and oozing with fat.
AZADA FOOD PLUS
Wreckfish and parrot fish are also common, plus lots of other fish whose identity I never quite nailed down since the names are all in Portuguese.īut the most swimming menu offerings, to my mind, are some lesser-known sea creatures. These things usually clock in at many hundreds of pounds before they’re shipped off to the cannery or Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. Not surprisingly, these isolated islands surrounded by cool Atlantic waters are able to haul in a lot of seafood.
Hauling in the day’s catch on Terceira island. The best stuff is produced on the island of São Jorge when aged, it turns tangy, “spicy, salty.” Says Rocha, “A two- or three-year São Jorge cheese can be side by side with a good Parmesan.” Stateside, you can find the stuff through Mello’s Chourico in the Azorean community of Fall River, Massachusetts, or Matos Cheese Factory in Santa Rosa, California, which produces a domestic version. Probably the best known local product is the cheese, which is so good you find it commonly in mainland Portugal, where 50 percent of the cheese comes from the Azores, says Rocha. Read on for the Azores’ 10 essential dishes and drinks. In addition to running the hospitality school, Rocha is also a partner in the Azores Wine Company and the organizer of 10 Fest Azores, a five-year-old annual event that invites 10 respected European and North American chefs to each devise a menu out of local ingredients, using student assistance to pull off elegant meals for paying diners and journalists like me.
AZADA FOOD FULL
To understand the full range of these islands’ edible bounty, including tropical fruits, sea creatures you’ve never heard of, great beef and incredible cheeses, I consulted Filipe Rocha, the executive director of the Escola de Formacao Turistica e Hoteleira in the islands’ largest city, Ponta Delgada on São Miguel island. I’ve also been tossing bananas grown on the property into my smoothies each morning. As I write this, I’m gazing out the window of my rented plantation house on São Jorge island at the healthiest-looking coffee bushes I’ve ever ogled. When it comes to food, the many unique microclimates make it possible to produce ingredients that most or all the rest of Europe can’t. Oh, and if you happen to be here in July, plump blue and purple hydrangea bushes. These pastoral vistas are punctuated occasionally by content-looking herds of grazing cows and quaint whitewashed dwellings with Portuguese-style red tile roofs. To wit, a typical landscape features electric green grassy slopes rolling down to an astoundingly blue Atlantic, ringed by black volcanic rocks. In recent years, that’s been changing, as tourists without Azorean roots have started to discover how breathtakingly alluring these remote islands are. I just spent a month Azorean-island hopping, and the first question posed by locals was always Do you have family here? Answer: Não, I don’t.
The Azores, a volcanic archipelago of nine islands in the middle of the Atlantic, aren’t well known outside of mother country Portugal or the large Azorean communities of the U.S. If your first question is “ Az-where-es?” don’t fret.
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