Leitão da Bairrada

Leitão à Bairrada is a suckling pig of three to six weeks, seasoned inside with a paste of lard, garlic, salt, black pepper and bay, sewn up, and roasted whole on a wooden spit in a brick wood-fired oven until the skin is glassy and crisp and the meat underneath is soft. It is carved into pieces with skin attached, served with orange slices, chips or crisps, and a spiced sauce, and drunk with the local sparkling Bairrada white or a red from the same region. The Mealhada stretch of the old N1 is lined with restaurants doing almost nothing else, several of them large and long-established, and it has been that way since the road carried all the traffic between Lisbon and Porto. The dish is protected as an IGP. It is not a small meal, and the crackling is the point - a leitão with soft skin has failed.

What you actually see

• The whole roast - suckling pig on a wooden spit in a brick wood-fired oven.
• The seasoning - lard, garlic, pepper and bay worked inside before sewing up.
• The skin - glassy crackling, which is what the dish is judged on.
• The Mealhada road - a stretch of the old N1 lined with specialist restaurants.

When to go

Year-round. A meal, and a long one. Lunch is when the Mealhada restaurants are busiest and the pigs freshest from the oven.

Honest expectations

Very rich and fatty - a full portion defeats most people. The Mealhada restaurants are large and can feel like production lines at weekends. It is a whole young animal, which some visitors would rather not think about. Book at the well-known places.

Nearby

The Bairrada wine region surrounds Mealhada; Coimbra is south and Aveiro north.