The ultimate "HowTo guide" for coffee in Portugal

So you guys wanna have some delicious coffee? Then you should come to Portugal!

Their secret must be the raw material they use, as they import it mostly from Brazil.

So you need to know how to ask for the kind of coffee you usually drink. Here you are some of the typical names:

If you want simply an expresso coffee you can ask for a "café". A great coffee with great fragrance. You must pay attention if you're at Lisboa, where this kind of coffee is known as "bica" among natives. So if you want to be part of them, you may ask for "uma bica, si faz favor". But if you are visiting Oporto, you should ask for a "cimbalino", keep that in mind. You'll get an intense coffee, but a bit small...

If you want a bigger one, with double quantity of water, you need to ask for an "abatanado" or maybe a "café cheio". If you ask for a "café curto" you'll get an even smaller but intenser expresso coffee.

And if you want some kind of american coffee, you know, those which are made by litres, you'll find it by using the word "carioca".

All of this gets worse when you want a coffee with some milk. You can ask for a "pingado" and receive an expresso coffee with a drop ("pinga") of milk. Or maybe you've asked for a "galão", in which case you'll receive just the opposite: A big glass of hot milk with a standard expresso coffee dropped into it.

Maybe the "galão" is too big for you... Maybe you want some more coffee into it... Then you should ask for "galão obscuro" if you want it darker or "meia de leite" if you want it darker and normal size.

And last, something we, Galician people, really love: "Café con cheirinho", a kind of coffee with marc liquour (they call it "bagazo")

Hope you've learned how to ask for your favorite coffee today... I did indeed.

See you!