Bonfim

Bonfim is Porto's east side, long a working-class residential quarter and now the part of the city where the interesting cooking has quietly moved in. The streets are unglamorous, lined with hardware shops, old tascas and tiled tenements, but behind a few plain doors sit some of the most ambitious kitchens in the north. It is a neighbourhood without a tourist script, where a chef can take over a former garage and pour everything into the plate. Bonfim rewards those who come for the food itself, not the postcard, and the contrast between the modest street and the room within is half the pleasure.