yup! we’ve eaten a lot of portugese tarts as we lived adjacent to a portugese community for 25 years, I worked near the iron bound district for a year and my D has been to portugal but it’s certainly possible what TJ’s is importing hasn’t been over-sweetened for the american consumer.
are you saying you have a set of experiences that lead you to believe they are made correctly?
best,
I don’t know what you mean with “made correctly” as I’m neither a baker nor a pasteis de nata expert.
I spent a week in Lisbon this summer and found them to be pretty sweet right at the source, but I’ve not had a chance to compare them side by side - natch. I didn’t even know they were still available at TJ’s.
I haven’t seen them at TJs for a while, I think they may be discontinued. I read on chowhound lidl has a good version but once we moved, lidl became a hike. The best I’ve found in manhattan is in our chinatown but I’m always on the hunt for something closer to home.
best,
Our Asian grocer gets theirs from Chinatown, too, but I’d almost say the TJ’s ones were better >ducks< 
lol, well, as I said, hot, sweet custard in a flaky crust, what’s not to like? The bakery that was near our house was also a coffee shop and they’d make fresh ones through the morning. I’d drink their coffee and wait for them to come hot from the oven.
unfortunately the young couple who owned the place couldn’t make it work and closed after about five years. Now it’s a more chock-a-block coffee house but the current owner uses the bakery in the basement to make what might be the best croissant I’ve had outside of france.
I tried the frozen Pumpkin Sticky Buns, super easy … my friend LOVED but I only ate one bite, seemed overwhelming to me.
We have a Portuguese bakery near us, and I got some sweet custard tarts from them yesterdat. They’re not like the Chinese egg tarts at all, not even the Macau version–these are fairly sweet and have a soft crust. On weekends, they also sell savory egg tarts with bacalhau, and while those have a firmer custard the crust is similar.
one of the portugese bakeries we frequent only prepares tarts over the weekend. Friday morning the crust is flaky and crisp but by the end of the day they are soggy. Saturday morning they bake fresh tarts but sell friday’s first. Now that know the bakery staff, they are good about bringing fresh ones out for us.
if you prefer a crispy crust, you might ask your bakery when they cook tarts and show up that morning.
best,
A little related anecdote about too lazy to grate. Sometimes I run out of places to store things, so in the winter, I often will put potatoes, onions, and winter squash in drawers in our carport. Our winters are typically mild and don’t go below freezing more than once or twice all year. So… we had just returned from an internat trip 2 days ago, and I knew my kids would want latkes, although Chanukah had come and gone. I wasn’t feeling the grating and squeezing in particular. And I wondered whether I could put the potatoes in my apple juicer, which centrifugally separates the solid and liquid parts. I thought this was brilliance. Practically no work involved! Juicer does all the “squeezing.” Well, until I grabbed my outside potatoes, I had forgotten that while we were gone, we had a 4 day freeze in the teens complete with snow, ice, wind, etc. My potatoes were just soft. Mushy. Dripping out all their water from the busted cells. I made a salvage pivot yesterday to roast them instead of latkes. And I can unequivocally say that you don’t want to squeeze all the water out of your potatoes. Because they had a texture only slightly moister than sand. It wasn’t good. I tried to “cure” by putting the roast pots into the mixer with hot milk, butter, cream cheese, and trying to make a mash. But somehow they resisted all attempts to make them any less dry. Now I’m thinking about how to deal with the 2nd bag of potatoes that were also in the carport. I hate throwing things away…
Then I did my job today 
Sometimes a wee scuffle leads to greater understanding. Have a good one!
Sometimes you have to admit defeat.
Jealous, as I had to buy 96 Portuguese muffins to qualify for free shipping out to the PNW. We are eating them like champs though 
moonshine?
Blech.
potato leek soup? (heavy on the leeks)
The Washington Post’s Voraciously newsletter (which helped get me through the early days of the pandemic) just did a latke recipe using thawed frozen shredded potatoes (and caramelized onions). Haven’t tried it yet but it looks good.
Even easier (especially considering what this discussion is about) are the frozen latkes that TJ’s already makes. They are a definite “yay”.
That’s where this conversation started…scroll up
