São Miguel Island is a fun place to eat. From steaming stews pulled from volcanic earth and little sweet pineapples grown in glasshouses, to cheese counters that feel like theatre and the world’s largest gin collection, you’ll find plenty of foodie experiences that make this Azorean island unique.
I’ve visited São Miguel – the largest of the nine Azores islands – three times and have dined at some of the restaurants I recommend below on multiple occasions (yes, they were that good). On São Miguel Island, you’ll find seafood hauled straight from the Atlantic, hearty Azorean steaks, grilled limpets by the dozen, and some genuinely cool spots in the small island capital of Ponta Delgada.
First, I’ll share some traditional dishes and foods unique to the island, then I’ll dive into the best dining experiences, restaurants and cocktail bars I went to on São Miguel Island.
Any restaurant I should try next visit? Leave me a comment below.
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Quick rundown of traditional dishes and foods to try on São Miguel Island
As the biggest island, you’ll find most Azorean specialties on São Miguel – check out my what to eat in the Azores guide. I’ll highlight a few below:
Cozido das Furnas (thermal stew)
Portugal loves cozido, a meat and vegetable dry stew with beef, pork, chicken, chouriço, cabbage, carrots and potatoes. This famous version is unique to Furnas, where it is cooked underground in volcanic steam vents.
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Lapas Grelhadas (grilled limpets)
Conical limpets are plucked from the rocks and grilled with garlic, butter, and lemon.
Bife à Regional (steak)
Azorean-style steak with garlic, pimenta da terra (local pepper), and a fried egg. Simple, delicious.
Queijo de São Miguel (Cheese)
This strong cow’s milk cheese has a sharp, slightly spicy flavour and is aged for at least nine months. There’s a fantastic cheese shop at the Ponta Delgada Market – Rei dos Queijos – where you can taste and buy cheeses from the nine islands of the Azores.
Pimenta da Terra (mild local red pepper paste)
A savoury pepper paste, often served with fresh cheese as a starter.
Queijadas de Vila Franca do Campo (tarts)
Small tarts made of fresh cheese, sugar and egg yolk – the most famous ones are from the Morgado factory and are individually wrapped.
Bolos Lêvedos (sweet, pan-cooked bread)
This local, slightly sweet bread from Furnas is cooked on a griddle instead of in the oven. Round and looks like an English muffin. Good for sandwiches or toasted with garlic butter.
Chá Gorreana / Chá Porto Formoso (tea)
Gorreana is the oldest tea plantation in Europe, and you can drop by to taste green tea grown on the island and walk through the plantation.
Pineapple from São Miguel (Ananás dos Açores)
Small, sweet and tart – little Azorean ananas are grown in greenhouses. You’ll often find one on the dessert menu or paired with morcela (blood sausage) as a starter.
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Best restaurants & bars on São Miguel Island
Boca Aberta, Lagoa
This was my favourite meal on my most recent visit to São Miguel Island. I was tossing up whether to return to Bar Caloura (below) a third time for grilled fish and laidback vibes, but instead, I pulled up to the small marina in Lagoa at Boca Aberta. At lunch, we were one of only two tables occupied on the mammoth terrace with sea views in both directions. On the way in, wave to the fishing boats, then stop to eye up the catch-of-the-day in the counter display, alongside any shellfish and prawns. What you’ll find here dictates a lot of the extensive seafood menu – there were no limpets, our waitress said, because they couldn’t legally fish them that week and refuse to serve frozen seafood. A good sign!
If you love seafood, it’s a fantastic menu – one of the best I’ve seen. We started with a couple of snacks: the presunto do nosso mar (sea prosciutto), a cured local fish tinted with beetroot; and Galician-style octopus. Then we made space for a whole sapateira (crab) and a zesty tuna ceviche. My friend loved the fried moray eel, which had a fatty layer like pork belly but was cooked beautifully, similar to fried chicken. Delish.
📍 Address: Largo Do Porto, 52, Lagoa, Ponta Delgada, 9560 Lagoa
🍴 What to order: fresh fish and seafood – choose from the counter
🗓️ Reservations: Recommended, but not essential. Closed Tuesdays
Bar Caloura, Caloura
Down the road from Boca Aberta, Bar Caloura is a well-known favourite for fresh grilled fish and lapas (limpets). The problem? It’s too popular and they don’t accept reservations. That means going early or being willing to wait. Luckily, just in front of the restaurant is an ocean pool that’s an essential stop before or after your meal.
Pop your name down, and, if there’s time, squeeze in a cheeky dip before your feast of grilled prawns, fish and limpets.
📍 Address: Rua da Caloura, 20, 9560-211 Água de Pau
🍴 What to order: grilled fish and limpets
🗓️ Reservations: Not possible. Open 7 days
O Américo de Barbosa, Mosteiros
The speciality dish at O Américo de Barbosa is grilled octopus, which comes piled high with fantastic potatoes. That’s reason enough to have had the restaurant on my “to eat” list for many years. One dish of octopus serves two, especially if you go hard on the snacks like we did – with fresh cheese, fish soup and a side salad. If we had another stomach, the sizzling limpets smelt and looked excellent too.
O Américo is no secret, though – we arrived to a full, bustling restaurant and popped our name down for a table at 3pm(!). It gave us just enough time to make a mad dash to the hot beach of Ponta da Ferraria for a quick dip in a thermal ocean pool. But Mosteiros is also a cute west coast village with a beautiful black sand beach where you could relax and wait.
📍 Address: R. das Pensões 13, Mosteiros, São Miguel
🍴 What to order: the octopus is essential
🗓️ Reservations: Call ahead or prepare to miss out
Restaurante da Associação Agrícola de São Miguel
At times, it can feel like São Miguel, with a population of 140,000, might have more cows than people. It’s true that the dairy industry thrives here – it’s common to get Azorean butter, cheese and UHT milk in supermarkets on the mainland. The island’s farming industry is brought together by the Agricultural Association of São Miguel, which, fortunately for visitors, has a restaurant.
What does that mean? Steak, obviously. This well-known restaurant serves top-quality Azorean beef. It’s a great place to try the Bife à “Associação” – a steak served with a light sauce of white wine and garlic, topped with a fried egg and pickled red pepper. You’ll get to choose your cut and whether you want 200g or 300g.
I’ve been all three times I’ve visited São Miguel and was surprised to find the place rammed on a Monday night at my last visit – call ahead for a table!
📍 Address: Campo de Santana 096 Ribeira Grande, Rabo de Peixe
🍴 What to order: steak
🗓️ Reservations: Highly recommended
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Petiscaria O Calheta, Ponta Delgada
Ponta Delgada is cool. Like, genuinely cool. I didn’t get that feeling on my first visits to the island capital, however, now there are spots like O Calheta on the fringe of the small city that wouldn’t be out of place in downtown Lisbon. But this petiscaria wouldn’t be the same on the mainland – the concept by chef Hugo Ferreira is a modern snack bar that leans into island produce, crafting seasonal share plates designed to let the ingredients sing.
The space has also been beautifully designed to reflect the island. Most of the seating is around the terracotta bar, where you can watch the chefs at work, or around a long shared table beneath nine terracotta lamps that represent all the islands of the Azores. There’s a terrace outside, where we were seated and allowed to order about half of the inside menu while we waited for an inside spot. It’s petite, so arrive early.
📍 Address: R. João de Melo Abreu 82, 9500-533 Ponta Delgada
🍴 What to order: specials of the day
🗓️ Reservations: Not possible, go early.
Tony’s, Furnas
The earth bubbles and steams in Furnas like it’s alive, hissing and heaving with volcanic breath. Naturally, the most obvious thing to do is cook a stew in it. I’ve long wanted to try the famous cozido das Furnas, the Azorean take on this traditional Portuguese dish. I’ve had it a few times on the mainland, but wondered if slow-cooking cozido – think hunks of meat, various smoked sausages, cabbage, potatoes, and carrot – underground would impart any special flavours.
First, we went down to the lake at Furnas to see where restaurants and families lower big pots into holes and bury them with dirt. Then, we went to Tony’s, one of the most famous spots to taste it, in the centre of town. How was it? Well, I didn’t taste any special flavours imparted by the sulphurous steam, and to be honest, the meat was a bit dry – but I appreciated the experience. If you want to try the cozido, you’ll have to call and reserve it ahead – a one-person serve will feed two.
📍 Address: Rua Largo Teatro, 9675-036 Furnas
🍴 What to order: pre-order the cozido das Furnas, cooked with geothermal power
🗓️ Reservations: Essential for the cozido, and recommended otherwise
Nightcap in Furnas? Try Espinha Cocktail Bar.
A Tasca, Ponta Delgada
The most popular restaurant on São Miguel? Surely it’s A Tasca. Be aware that, like Bar Caloura, this spot takes no reservations and seems to be featured in every travel guide in every language, so go early to get a table or drop your name down. Worth it? Certainly. Here you can try regional specialities and local dishes at fair prices that are hard to find elsewhere.
Start with alheira from the neighbouring Santa Maria Island, try the local blood sausage (morcela) with pineapple, and don’t skip the sesame-crusted tuna with local yam.
📍 Address: R. do Aljube 16, 9500-018 Ponta Delgada
🍴 What to order: sesame crusted tuna, other more obscure local dishes
🗓️ Reservations: Not possible – show up early!
Petrichor, Ponta Delgada
Ever been baptised in a bar before? Our evening at Petrichor kicked off with a friendly hello and a misting of moss water. Bartender André explained the concept of cocktails and storytelling, pointing to the current saudade-themed menu, which featured nine creative drinks linked to memories of the head bartender, Telmo. On paper, it all sounds horribly pretentious, but while Petrochor’s concept is a bit wild, the execution is warm and humble. In fact, I think it’s one of my favourite bar experiences ever.
Besides having a strong connection to storytelling and place, the drinks were also super interesting, unusual in ingredient or technique, and really damn delicious. When your drink is presented, the bartender sits down and tells the story – perhaps an island legend or a tale of childhood on São Miguel.
📍 Address: R. de Pedro Homem 15, 9500-099 Ponta Delgada
🍴 What to order: Whatever drink takes your fancy
🗓️ Reservations: Walk-ins
Try the neighbouring bar: Across the road, Resves has a great reputation for cocktails too.
The Gin Library
How has this small gin bar on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic collected the world’s largest gin library? With the help of people like you. The Gin Library is a really cool bar linked to a local guesthouse just outside Ponta Delgada. If you visit and bring a sealed bottle of an artisanal gin they don’t yet have (yes, there’s a PDF catalogue to check), then you can swap it for a bottle of one of the many gins they produce under their brand, Ghosts of the Ocean.
I visited with a friend from Australia, who brought an artisanal barrel-aged gin from Tasmania. The two super lovely staff were very excited, and it really added to the whole experience of being there. You can book ahead to organise a gin tasting, or if you just show up, any gin is €15 for a G&T. Take your pick from the intimidating wall of gins from across the globe, from Mexico to Ghana to New Zealand, or opt for a house gin. The Ghosts of the Ocean brand has almost a dozen gins, plus some experimental ones, to sample and/or take home.
📍 Address: The Solar Branco Eco Estate, 9500-604 Ponta Delgada
🍴 What to order: Gin, duh!
🗓️ Reservations: Better to make one – plus note that they close very early for a bar
Other restaurants to try on São Miguel Island
São Miguel is the largest island, and despite visiting a few times, there are still so many restaurants I’d love to explore. Here are some on my list:
- Tasquinha Vieira – fresh, seasonal Portuguese plates in Ponta Delgada
- Sacas Rolhas Taberna – a classic spot on São Miguel, close to the airport
- Õtaka – Nikkei cuisine that makes the most of Azorean fish
- Lagoa Azul – a local spot in Sete Cidades
- Cantinho do Cais – north coast spot famous for fish soup and fish stews (caldeirada)
- Casa do Abel – a steak restaurant that I’ll try next time
- Chalet da Tia Mercês – in Furnas, book ahead 48 hours for some curious gastronomic experiences: from thermal water tea tastings to multi-course food cooked in the springs
- North Sushi – Ribeira Grande sushi spot within the market
- Nonna’s – quirky and cool Neapolitan pizza spot from a couple of locals
Anywhere else I should try on my next Azores trip to São Miguel Island? Leave me a comment below…
