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# A week of breakfasts in Porto
- URL: https://freelance-desk.peachfin.site/a-week-of-breakfasts-in-porto/
- Published: 2026-09-21T14:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T21:34:08.000Z
- Description: Seven mornings, seven cafés, and why the best one served nothing but toast, butter and very strong coffee.
- Author: Clara Weiss
- Tags: Travel, #Import 2026-10-13 14:19

I set myself one rule for a week in Porto: breakfast somewhere new every morning, and never the place the hotel recommended. By the fourth day the rule had become a route, and the route ran downhill to the river.

## The toast

The best of the seven served toast, salted butter and a galão in a glass. Nothing else. The bread came from the bakery two doors down at seven each morning, and the owner cut it in thick slices on a board behind the counter.

> The story is not the pastry everyone photographs. It is the bakeries behind the cafés.

## The pastries

Every café sold pastéis de nata. Only two made their own, and you could tell: the custard set but still soft in the middle, the pastry shattering when you bit it.

![A narrow cobbled street in Porto between tall houses with iron balconies under a blue sky](https://freelance-desk.peachfin.site/content/images/2026/10/porto-street.jpg)

Rua das Flores at eight in the morning, before the shutters go up.

## What I would tell an editor

The piece is the bakeries behind the cafés, and the four people who still bake before dawn in the old town. I pitched it that afternoon from the last café on the list.