You can find something delicious at midnight in Covilhã
This is something that happens in Covilhã, the portuguese city I am living now. The first time I heard about it, I thought it was just like the movies. Covilhã already has it's charms: It is a small ancient european city, very different from any other place I ever lived in. There are streets made of stones, most houses are very old - but in a beautiful way - and the graffitis at the walls gives it a very special antithesis effect of old and modern combined. Honestly, I wasn't very excited to live in a town with 30 thousand citizens. But when I moved in and someone told me about the saudade street and what happens at midnight, I was very excited to see it for myself.
Here, at 12 a.m., the factory opens up. Everyone here calls it the "fábrica", but it has a name: Pastelaria Estrela Doce. The "Sweet Star Pastry Shop" is a confectionery factory that opens at the very first minutes of the day to bake all kinds of sweets and breads for the whole city. The amazing thing is: they are open doors for everyone who wants to visit and grab something to eat. They expose delicious goods of all kinds and tastes you can have for € 0.80 (the sweet ones) or € 1.00 (the salty ones).
It is placed at a street called saudade, and it helps making the whole experience poetic. If you don't speak portuguese, you probably have no idea what saudade means. It is a word that only exists in our language and it means to miss something or someone. Longing it. Not in a melancholic way: you might miss someone who lives far away, or a food you used to eat in your childhood, or someone who's passed away. This feeling is called saudade and you have it. I have saudade of my parents, who live in Brasil. What saudade do you have?
At the end of Saudade, you find Pastelaria Estrela Doce. It's a building with an old sign that you almost can't read anymore. You take the side stairs and don't worry if the door is closed: you can knock and one of the employees, our baking heroes, will open for you. Sometimes, they will let you taste something they're baking. Once, I tasted a traditional christmas sweet called filhós, a bread with sugar and cinnamon that it's delicious.
You can also find cakes, pies, croissants, bread with chorizo (a meat) and the famous pastel de nata. The popular called, at least by brazilians, "natinha" (little nata) is a must-taste portuguese sweet: a puff pastry with sweet cream on top that we eat with cinnamon. A portuguese masterpiece originated in a region called Belém, at the capital Lisboa, that now has traveled the whole country.
If you ever come to Covilhã, this charming little town, you should visit the factory and have the experience of eating sweets at dawn. Most of my friends like to buy their breakfast, so they wake up and have an amazing coconut pastry in the morning. A good tip for you: go after 2 p.m., when the sweets are coming out of the oven.
By Isabela Gadelha
A brazilian living in Portugal.
Instagram/Twitter: @belagmelo