Baixa

The Baixa is Porto's granite heart, a downward-sloping tangle of streets between Aliados and the river where ornate nineteenth-century façades give way to tiled shopfronts and stand-up wine bars. It is dense, loud and lived-in: office workers, students and old men in cafés share the same blocks, and the dining runs from century-old petisco houses to tightly run tasting rooms. Here you find the canonical dishes of the north done seriously, the cataplana, the slow-braised meats, the salt cod a dozen ways, alongside a newer guard pouring natural wine by the glass after dark. The Baixa rewards wandering: the best tables are often down a stairwell or behind an unmarked door.