Taste the Spirit of the Azores on a Food Tour of its Islands

"Not long ago, this was considered food for the poorest islanders. Now, it’s a delicacy,” says my guide José Pedro Quadros, as a cast-iron skillet of limpets — lapas in the local tongue — lands sizzling at our lunch table, heady with garlic and parsley. “The secret ingredient is a dash of pimenta da terra — a salted red pepper paste made only in the Azores,” our waiter reveals. The dark-haired, rangy man introduces himself briskly as Bruno, son of Maria Espinola who’s turned Os Amigos restaurant, here on the south shore of São Jorge island, into a local institution over the course of four decades. Napkins tucked into collars, José and I ease the golden molluscs from their crinkled half-shells, swiping hunks of white bread through the oily sauce between perfect mouthfuls of buttery, briny flesh.

After a morning spent hiking forested plateaus, drinking from springs and swimming in basalt-rimmed lagoons, I’ve worked up an appetite. And my broad-set, jovial local guide has brought me to this lively, traditional restaurant for a formula that José says has sustained life in this wild and sparsely populated archipelago: good company and hearty, locally farmed food. Families are arriving in their Sunday best from the nearby church for simple platters of fresh, juicy bigeye tuna or still-bloody beef steak. The lapas were collected that morning by local divers, I’m told — prised deftly off the rocks with a sharp, practised knife. Hard work for a small yield, but nothing islanders aren’t used to.

Settled by the Portuguese in the 15th century, the Azores’ nine fertile, still-forming volcanic islands are cast adrift in the Atlantic, 900 miles off the coast of Europe — the ideal pit stop for vessels returning from Asia and the Americas. “Centuries of sea trade expanded our larders with spices and crops, but isolation and limited infrastructure also made our food microregional — recipes and traditions vary island to island, even village to village,” José explains over dessert — a baked flan of extraordinary creaminess, made with milk from the São Jorge’s prodigious population of pasture-grazed cows. “We’ve always had to be self-sustaining, to be clever and work with what we have to hand. We’re Portuguese, but we’re a long way from Lisbon.”

Coffee, Cookies & Creamy Milk

That Azorean ingenuity is on full display down the coast at Vimes, a rustic village of striking, dark-stone cottages built atop a fajã — an ancient landslide, one of around 70 such hard-to-access outcrops encircling São Jorge’s crested dragon-spine. Here, the Nunes family has torn up the rule book on coffee cultivation — usually undertaken at altitudes of 200 to 2,000 metres — by harvesting Arabica from the ocean-level orchards surrounding their coffeeshop, Café Nunes.

“The Atlantic and the fruit trees give the beans something special,” Mario Nunes says, as we tour his home turf, cracking small jokes in a way I’ve encountered elsewhere on the island — a far cry from Azoreans’ hard-bitten reputation. In the kitchen, his diminutive mother, Alzira, is toasting sun-dried and hand-shelled coffee beans in a large pan, the natural oils giving the contents a chocolatey gloss. I want to bottle the malty, nutty smell and wake up to it every day. “Like with everything in the Azores, coffee came with immigration — from Brazil, likely in the late 18th century,” Mario says. “We’re not the only coffee growers in Europe, but I like to think we’re the best — and you can only drink ours here.”

On the cafe’s terrace, gazing south across a sparkling strait towards the 2,351-metre stratovolcano on neighbouring Pico island, espresso cups arrive alongside fragrant, horseshoe-shaped espécies biscuits made with anise and cinnamon dough — a local recipe dating back to the arrival of the first spice ships. The combination is divine — the rich black coffee softening the sweet cookie as I dunk and sip in the sunshine, observing the shifting, breathing counterpane of the ocean. “Life here is slow — and that suits us,” José says, just before we bid goodbye. “We often joke that we’re 50 years behind the rest of the world, but when I look at what’s going on today, I think maybe that’s no bad thing.”

It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by third-generation farmer Emanuel Fontes when I meet him at dusk in his meadows, five miles north along the craggy, snaking coast, where he milks his beloved herd of Holstein Friesian cows. With broad shoulders and a russet beard, the young president of the Dos Lourais Dairy Cooperative (one of three such factories on São Jorge) cuts a dashing figure. “I spend years getting to know each cow, earning their trust slowly. Each has a different temperament, like people. And when they trust you, they will trust you forever,” he croons as we wait for three-dozen cows to bring themselves up from the lower pastures to his milking station. “I won’t rush them; happy cows make the best milk.”

Emanuel offers travellers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the work that goes into the island’s most famous export, São Jorge cheese, which has had DOP status since 1986 but dates itself to Flemish migration here in the 15th century. I’d tasted it earlier in my trip with José — mild, buttery, nearly spreadable slices of four-month-aged and morsels of the drier, more robust and peppery 24-month-aged delicacy. “The volcanic soil, the salt from the sea, our herbs, the humidity — this all adds complexity to the cheese as it ripens,” Emanuel explains as the first cows arrive, udders swinging, presenting their coarse flanks to Emanuel for petting. “And the fact we’re using traditional cultures and raw milk. I bring five litres home every day — it’s what I was raised on.”

When the herd’s matriarch, a huge, crotchety creature named Marquesa, finally deigns to arrive, it’s time to begin. Emanuel kicks the noisy generator into life and starts affixing suction tubes to teats, filling tall metal pails with fresh milk. He hands me a small bottle to try. It smells lightly of hay and warms my palms in the cool breeze lifting off the ocean, the water now just a sheen beyond the darkening patchwork of emerald fields. A sip turns into a glug turns into an empty receptacle — it’s heavenly sweet and creamy on the tongue, comforting in a way I hadn’t expected.

“This year, many things are against us. I may have to reduce my herd,” he says quietly when the last cow has been tended to. Fertiliser costs are up due to the ongoing Middle East conflict, cheese sales to the US are down due to tariffs and Ryanair has culled its Azores routes due to high airport fees, meaning hundreds of thousands fewer tourists. Not even remote islands remain untouched by geopolitics, it seems. “But we’re tough people. As long as we have milk to drink and beef to eat and the sea to fish in, we’re better off than many.”

Volcanic Viticulture

The fortitude required to weather life in the Azores strikes me fully when out on the choppy waters south of Pico island. I’ve joined a whale-watching safari aboard an open RIB with local operator, Espaço Talassa. Out here, with pods of bottlenose dolphins shimmying through the waves and sperm whales rising from deep trenches to nurse their young, puffing great fountains of spray into the morning air, the destination reveals itself as breathtakingly, incomparably wild. The coastal jet-black lava flows, the cone of Pico’s dozing volcano and the vast horizon stretching unbroken towards the Americas — all of it seems dauntingly indifferent to human life.

“For more than 120 years, until 1989, whaling was the main industry on Pico — it took root after plagues killed off the vineyards and winemaking in the 19th century,” British marine biologist Becky Milligan explains, vying to be heard over the squabbling shearwaters wheeling overhead. Nearly a third of the world’s 90 whale species pass through the nutrient-rich canyons that web the ocean beds here around the former whaling town of Lajes do Pico, she reveals. “Now we use the same lookout towers and tracking techniques to study them. Recovery for the species is slow, but we’re seeing hope.”

Recent years have seen a remarkable pivot for Pico’s viticulture, too. Cutting through Pico’s lush, rugged heartlands, I drive 45 minutes northwest to the Azores Wine Company, on the island’s north-westerly tip. Here, charismatic co-founder Felipe Rocha greets me with a winning smile and a firm handshake. The winery opened in 2021 with a restaurant and six rooms — a glamorous Bond lair, all panoramic glass windows and industrial-chic flourishes, nesting amid a dark maze of currais (dry-stone walls).

Low, hand-built and basalt-black, these Unesco-protected vine enclosures once covered 15,000 acres of shorefront. “Only 1% was left when we started buying up abandoned plots and recovering old varietals more than a decade ago,” says Felipe, uncorking bottles for our afternoon wine-tasting.

The ‘we’ in question involves one of mainland Portugal’s most famous and experimental winemakers, Felip’s business partner, António Maçanita. “He recognised the intensity of the grapes here was another level,” says Felipe. “A cooperative existed, but no one was championing Pico’s wines.” We swirl and sip a trio of 2024 vintages, each showcasing a different indigenous grape. The arinto dos açores arrives like a sea breeze in a glass — all taut citrus and saline snap, reminiscent of the morning’s boat ride — followed by the terrantez do pico, its bergamot and iodine complexity hinting at something ancient, before the verdelho rounds things off with a tropical lushness. “Now we’ve reestablished Pico’s reputation in the market, the price of grapes is almost at champagne levels,” he tells me. “Locals are going back to winemaking again.”

We weave past the winery’s barrels towards dinner at Latitude restaurant, where new 10-course tasting menus, paired with the vineyard’s storied wines, have been devised by Azorean chef Rui Batista, an intense, softly spoken young talent passionate about pioneering fine dining in this remote corner of Portugal. “A few years ago, gastronomy in the Azores was just one thing — now, it’s diversifying,” Felipe explains as Rui and a choreographed ensemble of black-clad waiters bring plates of intricate creations layering famous and unsung local ingredients.

Sweet potato croquettes sewn into a seafood garden are crowned by buttery, button-like sea snails, hand-harvested by the chef himself. A tuna tataki follows, dusted with smoked squid, then a coffee-drizzled cornmeal topped with pork skin popcorn, along with a devastatingly moist slow-cooked cut of lamb cradled by creamy fava beans. It’s an accomplished culinary dance through the Azorean larder, that continues even as the sun sinks into the ocean beyond the currais, dissolving them entirely into the darkness.

From Furnace to Fork

An island-hopping, twin-engine flight deposits me at the Azores’ main international airport of Ponta Delgada, on São Miguel. The jumble of dark-stone churches and modern shops seems more market town than the executive capital of the region’s largest, most developed island. Along serpentine roads into the interior, I head west for a hike beside the jade lakes of Sete Cidades, looping back along the north shore for a fragrant cup of green tea at Gorreana, an 1883-founded plantation that still uses century-old machinery. Later, in a sputtering, pungent valley of sulphuric fumeroles on the banks of the glassy Lake Furnas, I meet restaurateur Manuel Oliveira. A stern-looking man with an impressive moustache, Manuel breaks into warm, fatherly smiles as I approach.

He and his wife, Ana, opened Banhos Férreos 18 years ago in the nearby town of Furnas. “Come and see how we cook cozido,” he says. The unofficial dish of the Azores — cozido das furnas (a hearty, layered meat stew) — is to be my final meal on the archipelago. Beyond a wooden barrier, scattered mounds of earth are signposted with the names of local restaurants. At one, a municipal worker wearing hi-vis is shovelling soil to reveal a large steel pot, which he hoicks out of the steaming ground with a pole, and bundles into Manuel’s waiting van.

“It’s the quality of the meat that makes a great cozido,” Ana says when I’m soon seated in their homely, tiled restaurant set inside a former Furnas thermal bathing hall. White-haired, apron-clad and fresh from the kitchen, she sets before me a spectacular platter — plump blood sausages, tender chicken legs, a juicy hunk of braising steak and a generous pork shank nested atop sweet potatoes, carrots and a half head of white lettuce. “It takes five to seven hours to cook, so we drop off our sealed pots for the warden to put in the ground at precise times during the night,” she explains as I serve myself and the soft, meat-darkened vegetables break apart in the process.

“My recipe is a classic, the way cozido has been made here for centuries. I just add a little garlic, white wine and bay leaves — and some pimenta da terra,” she says, instantly reminding me to pick up a bottle of the sweet, piquant Azorean cooking paste I’ve tasted in countless dishes during my journey.

Like many of the Azores’ dishes, crops and traditions, cozido das furnas echoes something imported centuries ago — in this case, the stove-boiled cozido à portuguesa of the mainland, still served in rural areas today — and given a local twist that harnesses the islands’ raw, elemental landscape. As I eat, wondering if my waistband buttons will hold, I consider what it takes to put food on a plate in this remote part of the world. From harvesting limpets in brisk Atlantic tides and milking truculent, grass-reared cows to growing vines and coffee amid salt-laced sea gales, in the Azores, necessity and ingenuity have always been the secret ingredients.