Espresso in Portugal
Posted by TheShot on 03 Nov 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee, Starbucks
Despite Portugal’s prominent historical role in the development of the coffee trade (for example, they introduced coffee production to Brazil), and the degree with which coffee is “interwoven throughout Portugal’s social, literary and economic history”, I’ve found surprisingly little written about the espresso in this small-but-influential coffee nation. Last month I took advantage of some time off from my “day job” (and it didn’t hurt that my wife’s first language is Portuguese) to visit the country and learn a bit more about the current state of quality coffee there.
Portugal Coffee Culture
In daily life, the Portuguese are at least as addicted to the single espresso as the Italians — if not even moreso. Whereas Italians use the ti offro un caffè excuse to socialize for a few minutes over a cup, the Portuguese drink it like clockwork. It’s an expected way to finish every meal. And unlike the U.S., restaurant espresso is as good as anything you can get in a café.
One difference from Italy is the cappuccino. While available most everywhere in Portugal, it’s an interloper in Portuguese coffee culture. (It also invariably comes with cocoa or cinnamon.) As a result, milk frothing is generally primitive and poor. However, the Portuguese do add milk to their coffee. As with the Italians, it is practically unheard of outside of mornings, and then it typically takes the form of a galão — literally, a “gallon” — which consists of drip coffee cut with a lot of milk. I ordered a couple cappuccinos that were literally no different than the house galão.
One popular word for the Portuguese espresso shot is bica. While use of this term somewhat marks you as a Lisboan, it is understood throughout the rest of the country. Antonio Machado, the proprietor of the fantastic Casa Mariazinha in Porto, tipped me on the little-known origin of “bica”. There still is a bit of debate about this, but the term is actually an acronym, and it’s a holdover from when the first espresso machines came to Portugal with newbie instructions for how to serve from them. BICA (according to some legends) apparently stands for “beba isto chávena aquesida” — Portuguese for pretty much “drink in a warmed cup”. (Tell that one the next time someone serves you a shot in a paper cup.)
The espresso shot is ubiquitous in Portugal. It’s available in restaurants, cafés, and even stands within shopping malls so that you never have to walk more than a block to down one. They are generally inexpensive — typically from 0,50€ to 0,60€ a shot (less than 75¢) — other than what you can get at the few remaining European grand cafés that are making something of a comeback from extinction.
As a word of caution wherever you get your coffee, the Portuguese can smoke like chimneys. In some cities, such as Lisbon, we were the only non-smokers in the place. But there are towns like Braga where smoking is more the exception than the rule. However, today there are signs that Portugal could soon follow Italy’s shocking suit in anti-smoking health laws, as government anti-smoking programs seek to curb the enormous health care expenses coming for generations of aging smokers.
Portugal Coffee Quality
As I touched on in a recent CoffeeGeek post, Portugal seems to have the reverse problem of, say, a Seattle. Whereas Seattle has a handful of outstanding cafés to counter a baseline that’s pretty lousy, in Portugal the baseline standards are high enough that it seems the notion of seeking out exceptional coffee is kind of pointless. As a result, you don’t find a culture where people say “Café Blah blah blah” is the best place to get an espresso in town. But then anybody need only walk down the block for a good shot of espresso.
Overall, I found the Portuguese espresso shots to be pungent, with a darker brown crema that means business, and occasionally with a slightly thinner body. A tendency I discovered is that the average espresso seemed to improve the further north I travelled in Portugal [map]. Around Lisbon, a number of places served a somewhat weaker body than what I would typically find further north in places like Coimbra, Porto, or even Braga and Guimarães (with a few exceptions).
Some Portuguese recoil at the thought of a bica, despite the fact that I generally didn’t find it bitter or overly potent. Yet the Portuguese seem to put more sugar in their espresso than any nation I’ve seen. (I always drink it straight. To which one elderly Portuguese gentleman characteristically responded to me years ago, in Portuguese, “I have enough bitterness in my life.”) Another leading theory behind BICA is that it stands for “beba isto com açúcar”, or “drink this with sugar” — but I dismiss that as redundant, given the national sweet tooth.
Portuguese Brands
Imagine a world where everyone lives for their coffee, and there’s a place that serves it on every corner. Now imagine a world where virtually no one has ever seen a Starbucks. How’s that for Halloween spooky? But given that Portugal is one of the European Union’s top four coffee consuming nations, Starbucks can’t hold back forever. Which is why there are recent reports of Starbucks’ intentions of coming to Portugal.
But until Big Green moves into town, Portugal is brimming with a variety of competitive coffee brands and café chains. Delta Cafés and their coffee is the dominant force, though less so in the north. Some Delta cafés are fully owned & operated and come with full branding, while many others simply carry their coffee service and some limited branding.
While Delta is pretty good, my favorites of the national chains were Nicola Cafés. The simple Nicola-branded owned & operated kiosks you can find in shopping areas, for example, are excellent. I found that they served some of the best espresso in Portugal.
So as a first pass, here’s my weak attempt to force rank ten of the various major coffee brands I sampled more than once in Portugal:
- Nicola Cafés
- Delta Cafés – Can be particularly good if you get Delta Platina or even Diamante
- Beira Douro
- A Brasileira – A Portuguese institution, but espresso at Lisbon’s main Chiado café pales compared with the one at Braga’s Praça da República
- Chave D’ouro
- Cafés Christina
- Sanzala Cafés
- Magnolia Caffé – This chain brings a cosmopolitan, modern edge with salads, etc., but the espresso could be far better
- Buondi
- Sical – One of the weakest of the bunch, but still not bad by world standards
Note: Buondi, Cafés Christina, Sical, and Tofa are all under the Nestlé umbrella. For a comprehensive list of Portuguese café chains — along with photos of each their sugar, or açúcar, packets — check out this fine homage to a collector’s obsession.
I once read that residents of Porto call espresso the Cimbalinho — a reference to the apparent popularity of La Cimbali machines. However, I predominantly found mostly Brasilia machines in use throughout the country (Porto included). Following these were La Spaziale and then maybe La Cimbali machines. Occasionally I encountered a few Magister Kappa machines, the likes I’ve never seen before.
Coming up next: CoffeeRatings.com-style ratings and reviews of a few Portugal cafés of note, complete with the usual espresso porn photos. Stay tuned…
UPDATE: November 13, 2006:
Some follow-up posts on this topic:
- Trip Report: Lisbon Espresso
- Trip Report: Espresso in Coimbra, Porto, and Braga
- Trip Report: Illy Espressamente – Lisbon
16 Comments »
[…] In a previous post, I noted some generalizations about the espresso in Portugal. For this post, I’ve selected a few notable cafés to review in Portugal’s political and cultural capital, Lisbon. […]
[…] Back in August we reported on Caffè Nero’s expansion plans beyond the U.K. to the rest of Europe. For my recent travels to Portugal, I passed through London Heathrow Airport and had the chance to finally review a Caffè Nero for myself. (OK, you always have to wonder about airport espresso, but I’ll get to that.) […]
[…] Starbucks demonstrated success at establishing over 100 cafés in Mexico, which is generally not known as a coffee-drinking (let alone espresso-drinking) nation. However, Brazil is an entirely different story. As with their compatriots in the sibling nation of Portugal, Brazilians participate in a ritualistic, daily regimen of espresso shots as part of the culture. Also as in Portugal, the average cost of an espresso in Brazil is around 55-70¢ per cup. Starbucks plans to charge its new Brazilian customers almost twice that. […]
[…] Brazilian botequins — sort of café/lunch counter/bistro combinations — can sometimes be pretty awful. Despite Brazil’s esteemed coffee status, they often serve coffee that has sat on burners for far too long. But at these botequins, you can order a traditional cafezinho — a Portuguese diminutive for a “small coffee”. You can order it black, Carioca (”Rio style”: with added water), media (with milk), or pintado (just a few drops of milk). And no matter how you order it, it will come with mandatory sugar: the Brazilians and Portuguese love their coffee sweet. […]
[…] coffee culture for Anglo-Saxon markets. However, Starbucks has wisely not set foot in Italy or Portugal — knowing the folly of re-importing their native culture (once removed), putting it through a […]
Enjoyed reading your article, and just wanted to add further explanation the the whole “bica” etymology thing.
A “bica” in Portuguese is a fountain, or better yet, it’s the tube through which the water drips.
It seems logical that espresso coffe, that drips from a tap, could be called Tap (instead of tap-whatter, you have tap-coffee)
A quite unimaginative answer to your quest, and a rather simple answer, but those are often the right ones.
Thanks for sharing that background.
I think for every part of Lisbon, let alone Portugal, that I’ve been to, I got a different answer for how the term “bica” came about. 😉
Good article.
But the best coffe in Portugal is BUONDI.
nice article the best portuguese coffe is delta and us portuguese are addicted to espresso in portugual average person drinks 3 cups a day
excellent article! 🙂
make no mistake, coffee is Portugal’s best offering to the world right now and typically, it’s not a widespread export… am on a mission to find Delta or close enough quality tuga coffee in Manchester. Any clues, anyone? Cheers 🙂
WHERE CAN I BUY PORTUGESE COFFEE ON-LINE
JIM, it’s not hard to find out with a Google search or two.
For example, the coffee we most preferred, Nicola, has a Web site above with an online store. However, it appears that you must first register and it expects you to live in Portugal. So we got around that with a search and found another seller.
Of course, your guess is as good as ours about how legit they might be — so it pays to search for the business name on Google to see if there are outstanding complaints.
Then there are the Portuguese food shops. In the Bay Area, there are plenty along Alum Rock Road, aka Little Portugal, in San Jose. A regular reader pointed out a classic Portuguese café there (though only OK espresso): Cafe do Canto. There are also online Portuguese food shops (for example).
[…] that Bica was the name of a model of an espresso machine once widely used in Portugal. According to Coffeeratings.com, BICA might be an acronym either for “beba isto chávena aquecida” (drink in a heated cup) or […]
tenho pena que nao conste na lista os cafe TROPICAL. É uma trorrefacçao situada no norte de Portugal, se nao me engano, em Valongo. Sou viciada nesse café. É excelente. Acredito que sera em breve uma das grandes marcas de Portugal.
Cafés Tropical de J. Ribeiro & Leitão, Lda. em Campo Valongo? Ainda não tentei. Vamos procurá-los.
Recently I visited a Christina’s Cafe in Cas Cais. Great place for my morning Americano. It was in the Pinohieros neighborhood. Anyone familiar with the place?