Found Me Some Portuguese Food

So anyways it seems to me that it took like forever for me to have a non-ordinary event happen in 2017. In a perfect world I would have been down in Athens, GA last Friday night to attend a Yacht Rock Revue concert at the Georgia Theater and then on Saturday night I would have been in my favorite funky city of Asheville, NC attending the Donna The Buffalo show at the Orange Peel.

Instead here I am hunting and pecking at the keyboard under the watchful gaze of BooBoo Dammit on Thursday, January 12th. Good gawd the last time I was out was New Years Eve!!! Like really. WTF!!! No wonder I was happy happy at about or aboot 515pm yesterday as I made my way out of the Mother House's doors to my left sided dented and scratched but amazing mileage with heated effing seats 2013 VW Passat TDI.

Seriously I almost was gliding to my car last night as I was so pumped to get out and about to was to be my 3rd event of the year that had become the 1st event of the year. Okay maybe gliding is not the correct word. At my size I be not gliding anywhere; I be plodding. LOL. Anyways you get the gist and hopefully not the visual. Smiles.

So anyways I love going to Asheville. The drive is kind of short when you look at things from my perspective. Pretty much an hour or so to get there. Traffic is not an issue if I am making my way there from work. More on that in a sec or maybe a few secs depending on how much more babbling I do before I get to the point. The drive is way better though in daylight or when you are not driving in SC NC dark. It's especially nice on SC 25 NC 25 and then I26 in NC as you motor through the start of the Blue Ridge Mountains when coming from around Travelers Rest area.

Okay back on point to when I leave work I get to miss most traffic as I am taking Suber Rd. to SC290 to get my BBG butt to SC 25. The other name for SC290 in "dem dese" parts is Locust Hill Road. Okay seriously WTF with the W standing for Who and T standing for The and F standing for Fudge named the fucking road Locust Hill. Seriously would you not think that a house on Peachtree Rd or Honey Bee Way would have more cachet than Locust Effing Hill. Every time I see the word locust it makes me harken back to some epic Charlton Heston biblical saga directed by Cecil de Mille or is that DeMille. Hmm. In the big scheme of things well it matters none. LOL. Okay rant over. Suffice to say I am not impressed with Locust Hill as a place name.

So my first stop was this new Portuguese cafe in Asheville that opened their doors about 6 weeks ago. I had seen an article on this new place in the cool Mountain Xpress newspaper that services the Asheville area that has tons of articles on foodie things, craft beers, local nightlife and arts with an editorial slant that is more community focused than the typical Gannett reprints with their syndicated columnists that we are now getting in many local daily papers.

Anyways the name of the place is "Fill My Cup Cafe" and it is owned and managed by the Freitas. Mr and Mrs were out on a date night it seems as the very nice day shift manager explained to me when she sat down near me to talk about the food menu.

It has been forever since I have had authentic Portuguese food. Okay forever goes back to July of 1999 when I moved from Montreal to Greenville, SC. For my last 6 years in Montreal I lived in an area of the Plateau Mont-Royal that was loosely known as Little Portugal replete with Portuguese food stores, restaurants, cafes and bars and front yard shrines to the Virgin Mary. I got to experience an awful lot of Portuguese culture by neighborly osmosis during that time. You want to experience sports fanaticism at its best. Sit outside on your front stoop on St. Urbain Street anytime Brazil wins a football (soccer for us American and Canadian types) game of any magnitude. It is "Carnivale" time for 5-6 hours when that happens. I'd be out there with Jeune Homme watching all of the excitement parading up and down the street with my landlords the Delgados. They always gave me care packages of authentic food and homemade wine and port. I never had the heart to tell them in my early days of single parenthood that I was not a wine drinker. LOL. The food was amazing. I especially loved their method of cooking chicken and their native sausage.

Okay I do tend to ramble off and on subject. LOL. So I was there by myself on Wednesday night so I could not take full advantage of the dining experience and partake in a bunch of small plates tastings running the gamut from cacoila (pork marinated for three days and then slow cooked and broiled) or a fava bean dish cooked with sweet onions and chourico sausage or maple-glazed chicken kebabs. My go-to option was then a Portuguese soup and sandwich combo plate. So my dining choice was Caldo Verde and Chourico on Papo Secos (pictured above). This would be known as Portuguese Kale Soup (Caldo Verde) with a Garlicky Paprika Pork Sausage (Chourico) on an authentic artisan roll (Papo Secos). All I can say is that it was epic, awesome, cool and excellent. I should have asked if I they sold care packages. I will attempt the soup this weekend which is no biggie as I already make soups very similar with kale and potato but unless I can find a place that sells chourico I will have to substitute andouille sausage which I have in the house. Facebook posts to follow....

Peace out....Rock On!