The balmy, semi-tropical climate, dramatic landscapes, and famous eponymous wines of Madeira have been attracting visitors ever since the Portuguese settled this lovely Atlantic island in the early 15th century. Cristóvão Colombo called at the port of Funchal on his epic voyage to the Americas, and the harbor of this picturesque capital city is now often crowded with cruise ships.

During a recent visit with David, I discovered a world-class sandwich at the Mercado dos Lavradores, Funchal's down-home farmers' market, which is open daily but busiest on Fridays. This local specialty is known as porco com vinho e alhos, after the vinegar-and-garlic marinade used to flavor its filling: tender chunks of pork loin braised with summer savory, oregano, and fresh bay leaves from the laurel trees that grow wild on Madeira's soaring volcanic peaks. The meat is scooped into a round, pillowy bolo de caco (griddle bread) and doused with a ladle of the vinegary jus spiked with fiery malagueta peppers — which are larger than Portugal's famous piri-piri peppers, but just as incendiary. Accompanied by a frosted pint of Sagres lager, it was a fine lunch for a hungry traveler. In a moment of heroic self-sacrifice, I wrapped half the enormous sandwich in a napkin for David, who was stuck in his hotel room resting that torn Achilles tendon, which is starting to get far too much press, if you ask me.

Funchal's waterfront is filled with restaurant hawkers and garish menu boards offering "local seafood" (read: Anglicized or Americanized touristy fare), but that night David and I ferreted out the narrow cobblestone back alleys of the old port district, where we were told we could really find the city's best seafood in the quarter's tascas, or hole-in-the-wall eateries.

Seduced by Restaurante Gavião Novo's excellent reviews, and its hawker who simply wouldn't take no for an answer, we squeezed into the last empty table just ahead of a queue that suddenly started forming in the alley. Menus arrived promptly, along with an aperitif of crisp dry Madeira. (Sweet Madeiras are more well-known, but there's no better way to kick off a meal, we discovered.) We enjoyed it with excellent dense bread, olives, and the wonderful generic soft cheese simply known as amenteigão, a term referring to its butter-like texture.

I ordered the catch of the day, a red mullet, which came expertly grilled, drizzled with olive oil, and with a side of those fabulous creamy Portuguese potatoes David has been talking about forever. But it was his lapas com manteiga e alho (limpets with butter and garlic) that won, hands downs, our ongoing best-dinner competition. The saffron-colored gastropods cradled in their frilly-edged lavender-blue shells were drizzled with melted garlic butter and came sizzling to the table in a beat-up iron pan. We quickly demolished the first order and called for a second, slurping buttery limpet juice from the empty shells while we waited. David, who has quested far and wide to satisfy his obsession for these highly prized and hard-to-find shellfish, said these were the best ever. Óptimo, to use his word. I couldn't have agreed more.
— Janet Boileau (Feb. 16)

Restaurante Gavião Novo  |  Rua Santa Maria, 131  |   Funchal, Madeira
Tel: +351 291 229 238
Hours: Open daily, 12:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Restaurante Verde Gaio, in the heart of Campo de Ourique, in Lisbon, is the kind of place I’d been hoping to find with David: a hole-in-the-wall where food-savvy Lisboetas eat well. Really well. Granted, there are plenty of places, tucked away in the city’s crooked travessas, that feature good, simple food, but I wanted a place so wonderful, we had to beat the locals to the tables.

At 2:00 p.m., the peak of the mid-week lunch hour, the closely packed rooms in Verde Gaio are filling fast. But thanks to Nuno Correia, a Verde Gaio regular and the photographer of David’s upcoming book, we’re led through a tiled archway to a corner table in the back, where the clatter of plates and the din of conversation drop a few decibels, and there’s less danger of elbowing your neighbor’s glass of vinho verde.

The waiter sets down a selection of nibbles that practically covers the table: a basket of three breads, green and black olives, fresh white cheese with a saucer of excellent pumpkin preserves, a plate of chouriço, and chamuças, the Portuguese take on the triangular Indian savory pastry called samosas, which I encountered often while traveling in Goa. Nuno insists menus aren’t needed and gives the waiter the nod to let the chef have his way with us. We share a starter of ensopada de borrego — slowly stewed, meltingly tender lamb, served with crumbly cornbread, along with a bottle of white table wine. As a main course, David is presented with pork — the only meat that really seems to matter in Portugal — where the full-flavored, succulent porkers have no desire to impersonate that other white meat. I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of pig flesh in its every conceivable form since accepting David’s invitation to join him to pursue my research into Portuguese colonial cuisine. I’m especially fond of cured pork sausages, such as the dark and robust morcela (blood sausage) and the more approachable farinheira, surprisingly tasty sausage filled with seasoned flour. Today, though, I’ve accepted Nuno’s offer to share his favorite dish, and a specialty of the house — grilled fish heads.

The dourada (gilt-head bream) is served family-style on a large fish-shaped terracotta platter, drizzled with fruity olive oil, and sprinkled with chopped parsley and slivers of garlic. Alongside is a dish of Portugal’s marvelously nutty boiled potatoes, carrots, and green beans. The secret to enjoying the heads is to forget the visual impact and, instead, to focus on the texture of creamy flesh, crispy skin, and the rich taste of what many consider to be the best part of the fish. Apologizing for his breach of etiquette, Nuno abandons his knife and fork, picks up a head, and sucks out the tender morsels of fish cheek. I follow suit. My punishment for such indulgence? Tackling some of the near-vertical becos (stairways) in Alfama. Ah, the price of research. — Janet Boileau (Nov. 2)

Restaurante Verde Gaio   |  Rua Fransisco Metrass, N°18  |  Lisbon, Portugal
Tel: +351 213 969 579
Hours: Lunch, 12 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.  |   dinner 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.  |   closed for dinner Sat. and Sun.

I'm sitting in my new favorite place — Pois, Café — in my neighborhood, the Sé area of Lisbon. Pois, Café is a hybrid. It's part pastelaria, serving small sweets and pastries, and part restaurante, offering up brunch, sandwiches, and entrées accompanied by an astonishing sight is this country: a true, honest-to-Alice Waters salad. (Since I've been coming to Portugal, salads have been of the limp iceberg lettuce and greenish-red tomato genus.)

I first stumbled into Pois, Café, and I do mean stumbled, thanks to a horrifically sprained ankle, on Thursday with my friend Amy, an American ex-pat who's been living in Lisbon for 17 years. Over the course of two hours, she gave me an insider's look at the always fascinating, always perplexing lisboetas.

The curiously self-described "café austríaco" had nary a schnitzel or strudel on the menu when I visited. Pois, Café's nod to Portugal's heritage, though, can be found in its many egg dishes, the upfront presence of ham and/or pork sandwiches, its excellent coffees, and substantial entrées. On Thursday, I had their bacalhau espiritual, at heart a salt-cod-and-mashed-potato dish with julienne carrots and a molho de béchamel, and, as I mentioned, that surprisingly good salad. Today's entrée is quiche de atum, or tuna quiche, which is far creamier than its French counterpart.

The décor is flea-market chic: no two tables match, neither do any two chairs. Vases are old medicine bottles, and there's always a revolving art display hanging on the walls. What I liked most about this light-filled, high-vaulted hangout is its laidback attitude. It even encourages long visits: a working typewriter sits in a corner, if you're so inclined to dash off a letter to your namorado back home or finally start that novel; the ledge around the café is piled with books in just about every language; and newspapers litter the sofas. Think "Friends" meets the 15th century. In fact, right after I send off this missive, I'm diving into The Maias by Eça de Queirós — the 19th-century classic with an excellent new translation by Margaret Jull Costa, which got a great review in the New York Times. — David Leite (Sept. 15)

Pois, Café  |  Rua de São João da Praça, N° 93-95  |  Lisbon, Portugal
Tel/fax: +351 218 862 497
Hours: Open Tues. through Sun., 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

I thought I'd send a quick note from Lisbon to say bom dia. I'm here for the month on a research trip for my cookbook, to be published by Clarkson Potter in 2009. I've rented an apartment on the upper reaches of Sé, a sliver of a zona that takes its name from the city's famed Sé cathedral. Farther up the perilously steep hill, with its zigzag of stone steps, is the Castelo de São Jorge, the mighty fortress that once protected this part of the city. Every few minutes, below my window, I hear the eléctricos, early 20th-century trolleys, clattering their way through the tortuous streets of the old sections of the city.

My days are divided between intensive Portuguese lessons (no, I can't speak fluently, even though I grew up in a Portuguese-American home), writing and researching, and, when my friends are convinced I'm permanently fused to my chair, some fantastic meals — many made by them.

Being a café society, Lisbon offers lots of places to sip uma bica and people watch. One of my favorite spots is Nicola, the Art Deco coffeehouse that has been the haunt of Portuguese writers ever since the original was built in the 17th century. Lots of people call it a tourist trap — after all, it sits right on the impressive Rossio square — but I've been able to sit there with my laptop for hours, nursing nothing but an água com gás or two, with not even so much as an evil glance my way from management. In fact, I'm writing this post from there. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon and 1,15 eiros. But if it's excellent pastries and salgados (salty snacks) you want, wave over your waiter and ask for "a conta," or the bill, and walk to A Brasileria, around the corner in Chiado. Which is exactly where I'm headed. Tchau. — David Leite (June 5)