We are heading to Sao Miguel island in early July. No chatter here but I thought I’d ask anyway in case Onions just haven’t reported back.
Thanks for any help!
PS We visited mainland Portugal about 6 years ago and come from a part of the world with lots of Azorean ex-pats so we’re somewhat familiar with the food. But neither is a substitute for first-hand experience, of course.
Back from a truly awesome trip to the Azores. We had time to visit only Sao Miguel island, which is the largest/most populous of the 9 Azorean islands. After our first hour of checking out the island, I already told B let’s start planning our next trip back. Food took somewhat of a back seat because we were traveling with friends who had their 10 month old baby onion in tow but we made the best of it. Goes without saying, we killed A LOT of vinho verde bottles. Here in MA, we get a lot of Portuguese wines so they were nothing new for us but for our Chicagoan friends, they were novel.
Breakfasts were always at home and then we usually met up for sightseeing and lunch/dinner. We had some forgettable lunches of burgers, sandwiches, and fish and chips here-and-there (Gehinha in Furnas; Beach bar in Lagoa, which had some tasty sangria by the pitcher).
Very good meal at Tuka Tula, a beach restaurant perched at the top of awesome Santa Barbara beach. B and I split the clams and squid ink pasta with shrimp. Cold Sagres beer goes down like water. Forgot to take photos. 
Simple homey lunch at O Chico in Mosteiros. I had cornmeal breaded fish and B had some crazy fish mash-up with potatoes, cheese, and I think egg (he said it was delicious). We all shared the grilled limpets which were a bit sandy but fun to eat.
An enjoyable dinner at O Capitão in Lagoa. The 4 adults shared the tomato-based fish stew which was brimming with white fish, shrimp, clams and mussels, and rice. Wine by the bottle was way over-priced.
One day we had a glorious picnic on our way to Sete Cidades. Cheese, bread, chorizo, wine. Good company and a marvelous view. What else does one need?
You’ve settled it. The Azores are now on our must-go list. If I may ask, what did you decide for accommodations?
@tomatotomato I’ll direct message you with those details.
Just poking around and read this- we went to many of those places on our Azores trips in 2021 and this past month! You and I are like ships crossing in the night. Well-fed ships.
I thought I’d mention this restaurant was completely wiped out by a winter hurricane last winter. They are rebuilding.
Hi @digga , I just booked our flight to PDL in July and wondering if you have any itinerary advice since you were with kids and we’ll have our 6 year old in tow. Very excited!
Fabulous! Gimme a day or 2 and I’ll look back at my travel notes. Disclaimer—we are big-time ocean people, so most of our activities were water-centric (and the water can be quite chilly even in the summer but as New Englanders, we found it refreshing).
Hi, I found my notes about a short visit to São Miguel in 2023, and I would highly recommend you get a guide. We would have missed most of the charm of this beautiful island if we’d tried to explore on our own… There are plenty of small or private tours available. For what it’s worth, my notes are below:
Landing in the Açores for a gastronomic weekend, the lush green, almost tropical vegetation and volcanic landscape made a complete contrast to the Algarve - and the temperature was a pleasant 18 degrees. Welcome drinks and light tapas style supper at the hotel on the seafront in Ponta Delgado was our first introduction to some of the many delicious local cheeses.
Disappointingly, the first morning was overcast and foggy, but the clouds broke up enough for us to get a stunning view of the Lagoa do Fogo - a lake in one of the larger craters on the island of São Miguel. Then we walked around the beautiful, tranquil gardens of Terra Nostra where the frogs were croaking loudly near bathers in the steaming thermal pools.
Lunch was one of the highlights of this tour. The eleven guests watched our lunch pail being drawn up from an underground oven cooked for 8 hours by geothermal energy. The parents of our host, Christina, welcomed us into their lovely home to eat this Cozido das Caldeiras - pork knuckle, chorizo, blood pudding, cabbage, potatoes, preceded by some wonderful cheeses. We finished with two desserts made in-house - a pudim flan (a local milk pudding) and a cake made with the local pineapples. Some interesting wines from Pico accompanied the meal, and homemade liqueurs, including one made from milk completed this wonderful gastronomic experience.
A gentle snooze in the bus, preceded our arrival, in full sunshine, at Lagoa das Sete Cidades, a lake in a very steep sided, wooded, dramatic caldera.
Bruno Kosm, an internationally-experienced local chef, hosted our dinner at Casa Nostra restaurant. He offered a beautifully presented 6-course tasting menu accompanied by local wines, including some from Pico, grown on volcanic soil. They were mineral, smoky and slightly salty - interesting and enjoyable.
The next morning we woke to torrential rain, but by the time we arrived at the Gorreana Tea Plantation the sun was shining. A short tour and a tasting and then off to the caldeiras and hot springs of Furnas. This is the iconic Açores landscape - lush green, steep sided craters with lakes, spectacular waterfalls (accentuated by the earlier heavy rain), bubbling hot springs and steaming geysers. It was reminiscent of Jurassic Park. Some of us bathed in the orange, ferrous water of the thermal bath, whist other roamed the luxuriant park.
Lunch at Restaurant Garajau in Ribeira Quente was our introduction to local seafood, and, for many of us, our first acquaintance with the local delicacy lapas greladas, or grilled limpets (very good!), followed by delicious polvo al forno and fried mackerel. Local wines and desserts completed this very convivial meal.
Another quick sleep on the bus and we were at the bubbling steaming fumaroles of Furnas, where we tasted and compared, the warm, sulphurous waters emanating from the hillside.
None of us were really hungry for dinner a few hours later, but we had been assured that Restaurante Associação Agricola served up the best steak on the island. And it did! And we all ate it! Wonderfully tender, tasty and individually cooked to perfection! They serve 800 covers per day and it is difficult to book as it is so popular. Despite this, the service was both pleasant and efficient. None of us could manage dessert! A wonderful end to our gastronomic weekend!
We are water people too so any of that info would be great! I have been known to swim in Maine water (can’t say the same for my husband 
). If it veers too far into non-food territory feel free to pm me. (No rush, obviously, since we have six months to plan! Lol). We have ten nights not counting the overnight flight the first night. I was torn between splitting time between islands and just staying on Sao Miguel but I think with the kid it’s easier to stick to one island and it seems like there’s plenty to do on Sao Miguel. I do think we will split up time between several locations (thinking 3 nights on the West, 3 nights on the East, and remaining 4 more central), but definitely open to suggestions. My daughter is a great eater and will really eat anything. She especially loves seafood (she ate her way through every type of seafood Nova Scotia has to offer last July) so I’m expecting she’ll be similarly happy on this trip.
@Monchique thanks so much for posting this. I especially appreciate your suggestion to explore tour options to see parts of the island we may not otherwise see. I think especially because this is really the first trip we’ve taken that a) my husband and I have no knowledge of the language (French Italian, and Spanish we can bungle our way through enough, but we know no Portuguese -yet-) and b) we have our daughter with us in a non- English speaking country, I love the idea of connecting with locals who can help guide us. I’ll do some research on that!
Don’t worry about the language, most people in Portugal and everybody connected to tourism speaks fluent English… Jus learn the basics: faz favor (please), obrigado / obrigada (thank you from him / you) and bom dia (good morning). After that your interlocutor will automatically switch to English :o)
I will probably start my own thread soon - but until then - wondering if @digga and @Parsnipity have any supermarket, bakery, cafe recommendations for me? We will be near Sete Cidades for the first few nights, Nordeste the next bit, and Ponta Delgada the last few nights. I have pretty low expectations for the food scene in Nordeste, moderate ones for Sete Cidades, and higher ones for Ponta Delgada. Are there any high quality grocery chains we should keep an eye out for? We’ll be passing through Ribeira Grande on the way from Sete Cidades to Nordeste, so I’m hoping we can stock up on sandwich making stuff and other light breakfast, lunch, and dinner fare. Thanks in advance.
Oy—I don’t. Honestly, I didn’t do much pre-trip research and we mainly went by the seats of our pants. Worked out pretty well. Wherever we travel, we go to whatever shop is convenient and almost invariably, the were are better than what we can get at home.
I can’t dig up my old written journals, but I’m almost certain that my notes wouldn’t have been that meticulous. If my memory gets jogged (by looking back at photos), I’ll post.
Can’t wait to hear about your trip.
Thanks, and no worries. I know we will ultimately deviate a lot from whatever plans we make, but I like a loose itinerary because our daughter goes from zero to hangry in no time. (To be fair, so do I!) One of our vacation rental hosts has recommended Continente and Pingo Doce supermarkets so we’ll check those out. As long as we have copious snacks to keep hanger at bay, we’ll be good. I’m excited to see what goodies Portuguese supermarkets have.
You make it sound as if you were preparing for crossing the Sahara Portugal (including the Azores) is a highly civilized country with plenty of shops, from small supermarkets and corner shops, to the large hypermarkets like Pingo Doce or Continente. Your daughter won’t starve, and in despair there is always a café / bar where you can get a prego (beef sandwich) or a bifana (porc sandwich) or an ice cream…
Haha, come travel with my daughter for an hour drive and you may feel like you’re traversing the Sahara too! 
Pingo Doce and Continente were both recommended by one of our hosts so we will stop at one of them en route to fuel up on snacks.
I don’t have any specific Azorean resto suggestions. When you’re at a bakery, I’d recommend trying Bolos Levedos, which look like large English muffins. They’re a little sweet with a hint of citrus.
I also like the Azorean bread pudding recipe I’ve been making, so if you like bread pudding and see that offered, maybe give it a try.
Enjoy your trip!
This article has a bit on São Miguel.
We went to São Miguel and Terceira for a week in February 2023. I second @Monchique’s enjoyment of Restaurante Associação Agricola (and would recommend the morcela with local pineapple as a starter before your steak). We also had good steak at Casa do Abel in Agua de Pau, which is smaller and a bit more expensive than the ag association restaurant. In Ponta Delgada itself we enjoyed our meals at Tasquinha Vieira and Õtaka. Friends strongly recommended Taberna na Boavista as well but they were either closed that week or we couldn’t get in, I can’t remember which. Lunches were mostly from small cafes or snack bars as we drove around the island, all of which were basic but enjoyable. We ate approximately 1,000 queijadas de Vila Franco do Campo which you can find in lots of places (and buy at the airport to take home).
Supermarket-wise, there were plenty of decent ones in Ponta Delgada and scattered around the island. If you want a biggish supermarket, there’s a mall that’s probably a 5-minute or so drive from the airport called Parque Atlantico which has a Continente Modelo and I believe had free parking in the garage.
