Local dishes
What to eat in Coimbra
The plates worth knowing before you sit down, and where each one is done properly.
Starters
Negalhos
A tripe dish from the hills south of Coimbra, made from the same goat as chanfana. The precise definition is missing: the municipal page that held it is gone.
Queijo Rabaçal
A protected sheep-and-goat cheese from an 850 square-kilometre zone south of Coimbra. The city itself is outside the DOP area, and the milk ratio is unpublished.
Main courses
Chanfana
Old goat braised for hours in red wine in a sealed clay pot. From the hill country south of Coimbra, claimed by three towns, and not a city dish.
Leitão da Bairrada
Whole roast suckling pig with glass-thin crackling, from Mealhada in the Bairrada — twenty kilometres north of Coimbra and mostly in another district.
Desserts
Arrufadas de Coimbra
A round, light sweet bread scented with cinnamon and aniseed, and one of only two sweets in this guide that genuinely originate in Coimbra itself.
Pastéis de Santa Clara
Half-moon pastries filled with egg sweet and ground almond, from the Convento de Santa Clara. One of only two sweets that genuinely originate in Coimbra.
Pastel de Tentúgal
Dough stretched to between 0.06 and 0.15 mm, rolled around egg and sugar syrup. IGP protected, from Tentúgal in Montemor-o-Velho, twenty kilometres west.
