Chaves wears its culinary identity with quiet pride. This is Trás-os-Montes country, where the cold winters and rugged terrain shaped a cuisine built on preservation, smoke, and slow cooking. The town's most celebrated product is its presunto — a dry-cured ham with PDO status that rivals anything from across the Spanish border. You'll find it shaved paper-thin at the Mercado Municipal, paired with a wedge of local cheese and a glass of Chaves wine, which is earthy and honest in the best possible way.

Sit down anywhere in the old town and you'll likely encounter cozido à portuguesa prepared the Trás-os-Montes way — a thunderously generous pot of smoked meats, blood sausage, root vegetables, and chickpeas that demands an afternoon nap afterward. Folar de Chaves, a yeasted bread stuffed with layers of smoked meats, is the town's edible postcard, sold at bakeries near the Roman bridge and utterly irresistible warm from the oven. Don't overlook the freshwater trout from the Tâmega river, simply grilled with olive oil and garlic.

For restaurants, Restaurante Carvalho has been a local institution for decades, serving faithful regional cooking to multigenerational families. A Tulha is worth a visit for a slightly more refined take on the same canon. Street food is modest here — this isn't a tapas culture — but the weekly market on Tuesday and Saturday mornings is where locals actually shop, and wandering it with a paper bag of smoked sausages is the most honest meal you'll have all trip.