Family Farm Cooking Experience & Dinner, Tavira (Algarve)

Get a taste of the real Algarve with this intimate cooking experience that takes place on a historic family farm outside Tavira. It begins with a warm welcome from your hosts and a stroll around the organic gardens, where you'll pick fresh produce before heading into a professional kitchen, set within a beautifully renovated farm building. Here, you'll help prepare a three-course meal of classic regional dishes, including fresh-caught seafood cooked in traditional cataplana style, before sitting down to an al fresco dinner accompanied by Portuguese wines and sea views.

This evening experience begins when you arrive at Monte do Álamo, a 7-acre (17 ha) farm located just 10 minutes from Tavira's Old Town. Here you'll get a warm welcome from your hosts and start with a stroll around the gardens, pausing to help pick herbs and vegetables as you chat about the owners' efforts to support traditional Algarve agricultural methods. Stop to sample some fresh produce (like ripe figs straight off the tree), and hear how this plot of land has been in the family for five generations.

Next, it's time to head to one of the beautifully restored farm buildings, now a purpose-built professional kitchen, where you'll roll up your sleeves and help prepare a three-course meal of regional classics. Dishes can vary depending on the season (and can be customized to accommodate dietary restrictions), but will likely include the day's fresh seafood catch cooked in the authentic Algarve cataplana style (roasted in a traditional copper pot over open flames). 

As you cook, listen as your host shares fascinating stories of the Algarve and its gastronomy, and explains the importance of each local ingredient (including the famous Tavira flor de sal, harvested by hand from the ancient Roman-era salt pans east of town). Finally (weather permitting), you'll step outside to the patio, surrounded by olive, almond, and fig groves, and sit down to an al fresco meal with sea views. Enjoy the dishes you helped create, accompanied by freshly baked bread, Portuguese wines, and warm Algarvian hospitality.