Quinta dos Três Pinheiros

I walked the Portuguese Camino and had my best meal at this hotel which is right on the Camino. This is from the book I wrote about the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela called "Portuguese Camino - In Search of the Infinite Moment". The city of Mealhada, population five thousand, stretches out over nearly four kilometers. One guide book suggested that I skip Mealhada altogether and target a very nice hotel and restaurant called Três Pinheiros that was located just one kilometer from the north end of the city. The hotel had a resort quality about it, with a swimming pool out front, a gourmet restaurant famous for its roast suckling pig, and a function room cum discothèque attached to the complex. Having seen the discothèque, I asked at the reception desk for a room in a quiet part of the hotel. There were some villa rooms that were located away from the main building, and I got a pilgrim rate of just €37.50 for a spacious modern room with a massive king-size bed and a big bathroom complete with a large bathtub that I took full advantage of. The place seemed empty as I sat in the nicely appointed lobby writing my daily email and waiting for the restaurant to open at 7:00 p.m. If you are not having seafood in Portugal, then it is likely that you are having pork. The caldo verde soup has chunks of pork chouriço sausage, the porco à alentejana has cubes of pork shoulder, and every albergue serves thin pork cutlets with french fries. There is the cured air-dried serrano ham, the bacon boccadillo sandwich, and the carne de vinha d’alhos—a dish that is a progenitor of the vindaloo from the Portuguese colony of Goa. But the pinnacle of pork dishes is the leitão assado da bairrada—roasted suckling pig basted until the skin becomes a crunchy counterpoint to the moist meat. After tramping along the four kilometers through the main avenue running through Mealhada, I would not have suspected that this small city was a food mecca. Mealhada’s reputation for leitão was forged in 1949 when Álvaro Pedro opened his now famous restaurant Pedro dos Leitões. The family-run establishment can seat more than four-hundred people and may prepare up to one-hundred pigs in a day. The success of the eatery led to the opening of other leitão restaurants, including Pic-Nic dos Leitões, Meta dos Leitões, Rei dos Leitões, and of course Três Pinheiros, where I would try my first roast suckling pig. Pigs from the Bairrada wine-growing region surrounding Mealhada feed mostly on acorns and are considered to be the best quality in Portugal. The pigs are slaughtered when they are four to six weeks old. The meat is prepared with a rub of garlic, salt, and pepper and then skewered on a long metal pole before going into the wood oven to roast for two hours. The ovens are fueled with wood from eucalyptus trees, and later sections of grape vines are burnt to add additional flavor. At Três Pinheiros, I munched olives and ate bread for about half an hour before my waiter brought out my roast suckling pig on a platter and served me a few slices of leitão with some roasted potatoes. The texture of the dish is its most remarkable feature. Like roast duck, the skin is crunchy while the rich meat falls apart. The suckling pig had the unctuousness of a duck with the flavor of slow-roasted pork ribs. The meal was exquisite. I lingered with coffee and flan, thinking how cool it would be to spend a week in this town eating at a different leitão restaurant every night until I’d tried every one.