World Day of Coffee | Dia Mundial do Café | Día Mundial del Café

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Did you know today is the world day of coffee?

Being a part of the daily lives of a huge number of people, this drink already has its own day, which is fair, given the fact that coffee is the most consumed food in the world.

Besides that, its consumption has several benefits to human health: if consumed moderately it has an antioxidant action, diminishing the risks of developing cardiovascular diseases and also certain kinds of cancer.

There is also an International Organization of Coffee developed by the UN with the purpose of guaranteeing the quality of the grains among the producers, the sustainable expansion of the culture and the credit instruments differentiated for the sector, facilitate the international commerce, intensifying the transparency and extend the access to relevant information such as promoting the sustainability of the coffee economy, among others, through a regulating agreement.

The team of the blog A Coffee in Oporto wishes its readers an amazing coffee day!

Breyner 85

In Portuguese and Spanish below

In 85 Breyner Street you can find Breyner 85, a space with a lot to offer to anyone who visits it. The four story building was a doctor's house once before and now works as bar, art gallery, record studio and music school.

Breyner 85 is an innovative space that highlights culture and music, but this bar also stands out for its decoration. As soon as we get in it surprises us with the details that make Breyner 85 a unique and welcoming space, the perfect place for a coffee among friends.

Breyner has a dynamic and varied schedule, where there are poetry sessions, tertulias, concerts, exhibits, and quiz nights, for instance. Besides all that, in this exact space there are daily rehearsals, recordings, one can learn music and even buy instruments.

But Breyner 85 goes even further, for there is an esplanade in the backyard that has the perfect atmosphere for outside summer nights. This is a bar you should definitely visit, whether it's a winter or a summer night, because it has a lot to offer, inside and out.

Café Velasquez

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Open since 1995 and recently remodeled, retrieving its beauty. Placed on the old Velasquez’ square, now called Dr. Francisco Sá Carneiro’s square, it ended up adopting the name of the famous Spanish painter.

Café Velasquez, part of the affective and cultural part of Oporto, is known as a generation meeting point.

Architect José Saldenha, the responsible for the restructuring of several spaces, tried to inculcate a new image without sallow the habits that a coffee shop with old traditions has.

The idea became reality, being able to turn a uncharacterized space in a combination of light, color and textures. In a preexisting space characterized by irregular geometry, the emotions of its environment cause multiple perspectives.

The café has a tobacco shop, and its esplanade is very busy during the summer. Given the location of the Estádio do Dragão, on game days the café is invaded by sports lovers before and after the match.

Address: Praça do Dr. Francisco Sá Carneiro, 301, 4200-314 Porto

The Lingerie Restaurant

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Recently opened, The Lingerie Restaurant is placed in Gonçalo Cristóvão's street. It's a place that may seem ordinary at first sight, but actually can be full of surprises.

This restaurant intends to give eroticism and sensuality to its costumers' dinner, an innovating concept that aims to be the Moulin Rouge of our town. Seduction and eroticism  can be noticed right away by the decoration, with warm colors and erotic images decorating the walls. But there's more, the staff has an unusual outfit... lingerie.

When it comes to the kitchen, the dishes are exotic and aphrodisiacs, with menus that range from 20€ (without beverage), to 40€. This prices include the house's shows such as striptease on stage with a pole.

Besides the space intended to dinner there is the wine bar, a space that obeys to the same concept as the restaurant. The visitors also have access to a wide library of erotic books.

If you want to surprise, amaze, and leave the prejudices behind, The Lingerie Restaurant is ideal, leaving anyone astonished with an experience that one doesn't forget.

Bar Casa da Música

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Casa da Música is the main concert room in Oporto, Portugal. It was designed by the dutch architect Rem Koolhaas as part of the event Oporto European Capital of Culture in 2001. Although, its construction didn't finish until 2005, becoming an icon of the invicta  city. Despite all, you're wrong if you think the only purpose of the building is entertainment.

That said, the route of ssturday nights in Oporto has a new reference point: the Casa da Música Bar. This bar started functioning since march of 2013, where every saturday from 11pm to 4am, the top of the building turns into a dancing bar, alienating an informal, elegant and comfortable athmosphere to a program that favors new trends of electronic music. With an outside area, view to the gardens of Boavista, the space bets as much on new DJ's as in safe values, on a national and international level. The program is at Rui Trintaeum's charge (Loco Mosquito, Trintaeum, Rivoli Café-Concerto).

Commissioned by Rui Trintaeum, the Bar Casa da Música is, above all, the ideal space hang out and dance. In Casa da Música, there's bar every saturday night. Sharing space with the restaurant, it has as main dish the DJ menu and a special lure: an exterior esplanade with one of the best panoramic views of the city.

The dancing is towards the multicolor instalation of Pedro Cabrita Reis, created for two operas that saw the light of day in the Suggia Room, in 2009. The instalation breaks the vaguely extraterrestrial, vaguely industrial of Casa da Música - the ceiling is 7m tall, there are metal pannels hanging over the dance floor. Other luxury: the exterior esplanade, with the Boavista roundabout as a vanishing point and one of the best panoramic views in town. For being right next to the the Restaurant Casa da Música, the bar has a wide offer (15 references, with prices from 2,20€ to 5€), sparklings and champagne by glass. It also stands out for the white drinks chart.

Capa Negra II

 In Portuguese and Spanish below

Capa Negra II has a history of over forty years and is known as one of most bustling restaurants in the Oporto area. The reason for that is one of the Oporto's typical dish called Francesinha, and the way this restaurants perfectly honors it.

Placed at Campo Alegre, Capa Negra II is on the top 10 best national restaurants, all due to the Francesinha. Though for those who don't know it, the doubt persists: What is Francesinha? This emblematic dish from the Invicta city is a mix of roasted meat and sausages with other meat, all between two slices of toasted loaf bread with cheese on top. The perfect combination goes along with french fries to help savor Francesinha's sauce.

Capa Negra II has a very prolonged serving period during the week, opening at 12 am and closing at 1:45 pm. The prices range 10€ to 30€, depending on the meal and the clients can always use the take-away service.

If you would like to try this typical northern dish, we recommend that you visit Capa Negra II. Forty years of history and constant buslting cannot be wrong. Our best advice is that you arrive early so that you guarantee you won't have to wait too long. 

(Francesinha)

Casal Lounge

In Portuguese and Spanish below

In february of 2010 was launched right in Avenida dos Aliados the Casal Louge Caffé. Located in the building of the old Totta & Azores Banc, an architectural masterpiece of particular beauty, the Casal Lounge Caffé has its very own concept: it's a coffee shop, restaurant, pastery and bar. So, you can go there to have a wonderful breakfast, an amazing lunch, a snack, or only for a drink with some friends listening to a DJ.

This Lounge Caffé stands out for its homemade ice creams with more than 30 flavors to choose from. Crepes, homemade cakes, pizzas, pastas and the great invention of cakes with queijo da serra.

The space is pleasant, large, and its highlights are the leather couches, the walls covered with images of several european cities and a seventeenth-century chandelier. This coffee shop also presents an esplanade with Oporto's City Council and Intercontinental Hotel as a background, even if in opposite sides.

The Casal Lounge Caffé is definitely a place to visit, anytime, because it has the right options for each time of the day. 

Tendinha dos Clérigos

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Rock is in town

Tendinha dos Clérigos could be just another random bar, but there's something more to it, something that separates it from the rest of the clubs: the music preference. This bar puts the trendy music aside and bets everything on rock songs, mostly alternative. Moreover, you can see that in its logo, where you can find an electric guitar.

Tendinha dos Clérigos was born from Tendinha dos Poveiros, a bar that has been successful for quite a while. But the lack of space that made the clientele overflow into the street, led to the search of a bigger place and, above all, a place where the "night" could be extended till sunrise. And that's how the success of Tendinha dos Poveiros spread to Tendinha dos Clérigos too, in Conde de Vizela's street.

Even though the street is a little bit hidden, the red door calls the attention of anyone who passes by it. Inside, the decoration is simple. Black, red and orange prevail and mark the personality of the bar, where the walls are decorated with vinyls, t-shirts, pictures of musicians and even guitars.

Il Caffè di Roma

 In Portuguese and Spanish below

Il Caffè di Roma was born in Spain in 1994, with the goal to offer a model of traditional cafeteria in a warm, welcoming and typically italian environment. In 1998 the chain oppened its first space in Portugal. In 1999, Lavazza bought the chain to boost its concept and turn it into the lider on exportation of the perfect italian espresso, making Il Caffè di Roma one of the italian coffee shops of excellency.

Il Caffè de Roma presents a unique athmosphere, evoking the italian tradition of a coffee place as a meeting point. To taste an espresso in Il Caffè di Roma is a ritual to live with every sense, relishing each detail: the relaxing and familiar environment involving  hot colors and the scent and flavour of the authentic italian espresso.

At Il Caffè di Roma you'll be granted the experience of a special break, completely italian, and try delicious specialties besides the espresso: from the classic recipies to the most innovative ones, exclusively created and ready to be discovered,

Besides all of this, it presents a huge variety of delicious products to assure a consumption suggestion in every moment of the day.

Il Caffè di Roma covers the values of friendship, heat, spontaneity, proximity, familiarity and amicability typical of the italian culture.

The brand Il Caffè di Roma has a well defined personality and presents itself as a traditional place, as well as informal, inviting, balanced, accessible and comfortable, where the costumer feels completely at ease.

La Bohème

 In Portuguese and Spanish below

The new La Bohème presents a welcoming concept of gathering and sharing Entre Amis, offering a long list of wines, delicious tapas and a lot of music.

In the Galerias de Paris' street, La Bohème is known for being the best place within that street to enjoy a glass of wine. It's the ideal place to hang out with you work colleagues after a long day at the office, tasting a nice wine, snacking some tapas, and relaxing in downtown Oporto. In La Bohème you can also count on a pleasant music selection fitting the athmosphere of a work lunch, a quite afternoon or a meeting at the end of the day.

The image of the bar borns from the treatment of the walls and ceilings with different heights in wood of thin rind and pine floorboards' pavements. La Bohème is a space with peculiar personality, where its verbal identity inspired in the new french art suggested a visual approach built manually and materialized in an unique language. The visual and verbal environment of the impress suggests a casual but sophisticated, cosmopolitan universe, and yet welcoming.

Aduela

 In Portuguese and Spanish below

Aduela, a tavern launched last december, right across the Carlos Alberto theatre. It's not just a tavern, it's also a restaurant and it stands out for starring the portuguese culture.

There costumer may choose between several kinds of portuguese wines that are served by the glass. Aduela's cellar goes from Amarante's red white wine - which is served on a typical bowl - to Port wine. You won't find any beverages that are not characteristically portuguese, for the nationalist spirit of this tavern goes from the drinks to the food and even the decoration itself.

When it comes to the food service, the specialty passes though ham, sausage and pepperoni sandwiches, and also cheeses, toasts in bread from alentejo, tramontane or loaf. As you can see, typical portuguese products that every portuguese enjoys.

The place was decorated with old furniture, taking us back to a time when taverns were the most common place to grab a bite to eat. The chairs are actually bought in antiques stores.

Aduela is a perfect example of the true portuguese culture, a place which must be seen by international tourists so they can feel the nature of the country they're visiting, but also the portuguese ones, in order for them to feel home, even if theirs is far away.

Bubbles Vanity: Food & Bar

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Bubbles Vanity Food & Bar, the new project by BV Trading, opened up this year in Oporto's downtown, in Rua Conde de Vizela. This company operates in the beverage market, manufacturing sparklings and semi-sparklins, and Bubbles Vanity Food & Bar came to democratize the consumption of drinks like champagne. Aiming all kinds of costumers, Bubbles isn't elitist and it presents all kinds of sparklings and drinks, from Lambrusco for the youngers to  the most refined champagne such as Armand de Brignac. Every week there will be featured different kinds of champagne promoting new experiences and gathering moments.

The name Bubbles comes precisely from the bet on "bubbly" beverages, but they're not the only ones worthy of attention. During the day, Bubbles' meal service stands out for having as executive menu for lunch, and a contemporary style cuisine by dinner time.

However, this Food&Bar also has an exquisite snack menu, including Burrata, Creme Brullé de Fois Gras, the renowned iberian "Joselito"'s toasts or even the micro-hamburguers.

The space itself is also quite a highlight, for its bar has a DJ, a winter garden, a themed bar associated to Armand de Brignac's champagne and a restaurant-lounge, so that while in Bubbles you may never feel adrift, there are places for all tastes.

This bar, despite being recent, is already one of the major references in Oporto's night. It has modern and welcoming space, and the drinks promise to leave you bubbling.

Era uma vez em Paris

 In Portuguese and Spanish below

In Galerias de Paris we can find “Era uma vez em Paris”, a coffee house/bar created to continue the trip once started by “Era uma vez no Porto”.

This café was created in order to give the customers the possibility to “live” a night in Paris, but yet in Oporto, and also to prove that the world is a small place, and that every city, despite its uniqueness, can be transversal.

This is a place where you can hang out with your friends and have a nice conversation while listening to slow music in a very quiet and modern space. This bar offers its’ clients the possibility to have fun with no need to dance.

The coffee has a very nice and modern space, the music is slow and the decoration really makes us feel like we’re in Paris.

So, due to all this, this bar is worth the visit and whoever visits it will be buying a round trip, because whoever spends a nice nigh in “Era uma vez em Paris” always feels obliged to return.

Era uma vez no Porto

In Portuguese and Spanish below

From the river mouth to Oporto's downtown,"Era uma vez no Porto" became one of the highlights of our city when it comes to bars due to its alternative style. Placed in Rua das Carmelitas, near the renowned bookstore Lello, Era uma vez no Porto presents a cosy and modern space, which stands out for its balcony with a view towards the Clérigos' Tower and the Lions' Square, two of the most important landmarks of Oporto.

Era uma vez no Porto is the ideal place for an afternoon well spent in the company of a cup of coffee or tea, good music, and a good time with some friends by night to the sound of the guest DJ's. One of its most beloved features is the integrated "Loja Gira DIscos", which is a store where you can find books and vinyls.

Its retro-vintage and yet welcoming decoration, along with the usually alternative indie rock that characterizes the bar, gives it that special alternative touch mentioned before.

If you're looking for a place to spend a nice afternoon with your friends talking and enjoying a cup of tea, or a pleasant night listening to good music, this is the perfect place.

Café Ceuta

 In Portuguese and Spanish below

The Ceuta cafe was born in the 50's and it still stands today as a landmark in the Invicta. Placed near Clérigos, this cafe offers a joyful service and it's open until 2 am from monday to saturday.

This cafe is the place to hang out with some friends or even stay for a meal, where the highlights are some typically portuguese dishes like tripas and francesinhas or even others like Duck rice. When it comes to drinks, sangria is the most famous one there.

Aside from the gastronomic features, in the Ceuta cafe you can enjoy a nice pool game, domino, checkers or chess.
The decoration reflects the time of its birth, it has friezes of fresco painting by Coelho de Figueiredo, marmorite's pavement with gaskets and marble wainscotings.

It's one of those places you must visit if you're trying to know more about the history of the city. Besides, the food is typical and amazing.

Boulevard

 In Portuguese below

Located in Avenida dos Aliados, Boulevard is much more than just a bar. It was born from parties organized by four students of Oporto’s University of Nursing. After two years of work their goal was achieved and Boulevard was born, a mixture of coffee, bar and disco.

This place has much more to offer besides a night in the dance floor. From Monday to Friday its founding fathers organize themed nights that stand out for the atmosphere of social gathering.

The Boulevard stands for its dimension, having two floors where it can welcome 500 people. The first floor has more of a coffee shop environment, with chairs and perfect tables to spend a bit of time hanging out among friends; and the second floor is all about concerts and a great dance floor.

Aside from the drink service you can find in any regular bar or club, the Boulevard has also catering and pastry, which allows the costumers to enjoy their meal in the bar. The menu’s highlights are the francesinhas for 6.50€ and the hotdogs for 5.00€.

It’s a multitasking café, capable of serving meals, or provide room to have a nice conversation among friends and have fun till dawn, so if you’re looking for any of those things, Boulevard is a smart choice.

Club Vila

In Portuguese and Spanish below

Near Praça D. João I you can find Club Vila, also known as Vila or Villa. This is one of the larger bars in Oporto’s downtown. Villa prides itself to be one the main preferences when it comes to youngster’s nights out, throwing several weekly events.

The building was previously occupied by the Villa Community, which was meant to be a cultural space but it didn’t work out. However, Club Vila seems to have come to stay, and with a total of 1500 m², this club is divided in two floors and it’s able to welcome 2000 people.

Vila Porto is a great option if the idea is to dance all night long because of its dance floor, which covers the whole ground floor. Although, there’s also a lounge area, on the first floor, especially for costumers whose main interest relies on 80’s and 90’s rock.

If perhaps you’re more interested in a nice quite evening, whether dancing or just hanging out with your friends, Villa presents you two options, in a room filled with modern decoration and tremendous glamour.