Amore Restaurant, 180 North Lime Avenue

For almost 300 years, Portugal’s seafarers and explorers dominated the high seas. The exploits of titans like Magellan, though tainted with the horrors of colonialism and its accompanying slave trade, gave the country a stranglehold on the trade of goods around the world. Naturally, Portuguese sailors developed a love and familiarity with the most abundant food source available while sailing the globe: seafood. Cod, particularly salted cod, became a highly nutritious staple of the seaman’s diet, but other types of seafood also saw themselves refined into preparations both decadent and simple.

At Amore Restaurant, who’s owners Liana and Tito Vitorino hale from Portugal, a selection of cataplanas offer a deep dive into authentic Portuguese fish stews called cataplanas. A cataplana is both the name of the dish and of the spherical copper pot in which the dish cooks. The pot has a locking mechanism that seals the ingredients inside and speeds up the cooking process, sort of like a Dutch oven or an analog pressure cooker. Amore’s cataplana de marisco comes with lobster tail, shrimp, clams, mussels, calamari, bell peppers and boiled potatoes stewed for around 10 minutes in a rich seafood broth. This seafood sampler stew is not for the faint of heart. Stacked high with protein, its brininess is enough to test your sea legs.

But as they say in Portugal, o que nao mata, engorda—what doesn’t kill you, makes you fatter.

Amore Restaurant, 180 North Lime Avenue

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