What Locals Know

There's a fish restaurant in Santa Luzia that has no English on the menu and a chalkboard outside with the day's catch written on it. The tables outside face the lagoon. You arrive, you see what there is, you sit down. It costs almost nothing and it's some of the best seafood in the Algarve.

Santa Luzia is five minutes from Tavira. It calls itself the octopus capital of Portugal, which sounds like a joke but is taken seriously by everyone who lives there. The octopus dishes, prepared in about a dozen different ways depending on which restaurant you're in, are exceptional by any standard.

Most visitors to Tavira don't make it to Santa Luzia. It doesn't advertise. There's nothing obviously remarkable about it from the road. You only go if someone tells you to go, which is precisely the point.

This is what I mean when I say local knowledge is its own kind of currency. Not the obvious places, those are easy to find, and often fine. The places that require someone to have already done the work.

I think about this sometimes when people ask me what I do. A reasonable part of the answer is: I know where to go. I know which version of a place is worth your time. I know when to drive past the obvious option and keep going for another five minutes. That's not a grand skill. But it's consistently more useful than anything you'll find on a list.