If you want the Porto table—the one locals return to for decades—A Cozinha do Manel is a compelling place to start. Tucked along Rua do Heroísmo, it has the feel of a restaurant that never needed reinvention: a bar up front, a dining room behind, and a steady rhythm built around slow cooking and good ingredients.
The menu leans into what this city does best: comforting, unapologetically traditional dishes that taste like they’ve been perfected through repetition. Every day, you will find the same three fish dishes (bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, hake filets with octopus rice, octopus filets with rice) and three meat dishes (old-style duck rice, oven-baked veal, and beef filet with rice and beans). Yet, every day there is also a codfish and a meat dish-of-the-day that feel designed more for regulars rather than tourists.
And then there’s the room itself. Beyond the azulejos and the hum of conversation, the walls reveal a quirky detail that makes you look twice: framed cloth napkins that have become canvases—signed, sketched, and collected over time like edible-night souvenirs.
This is the kind of restaurant where you don’t need a strategy—just a reservation plan (or an early arrival) and an appetite for the Porto side of Porto.
For more information, visit the A Cozinha do Manel Facebook page.
A Cozinha do Manel
Rua do Heroísmo 215
Campanhã District
Porto
Phone: +351 919 787 598
Tip: Go hungry, order simply, and let the day’s specials do the work.