A week of breakfasts in Porto

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.

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.