Bifana

Bifana is thin pork steaks simmered in garlic, white wine and bay leaf, piled into a crusty roll and soaked with the pan juices. It is Portugal's most popular sandwich, sold from cafés and stalls on every corner and eaten standing up as often as sitting down.

What it really is

Thin-cut pork steaks marinate briefly in garlic, white wine, bay leaf and paprika before simmering gently in that same liquid until tender, the sauce reducing as they cook into something concentrated enough to soak straight into bread. The pork goes into a crusty roll while the meat and its juices are still hot, and the bread is meant to soften slightly from the liquid rather than stay dry.

The bread has to soak up the juices, not just hold the meat. A bifana served dry, without a generous spoonful of the simmering liquid poured over, is missing half of what makes it a bifana rather than a plain pork sandwich.

How it is served

• In a crusty roll, the pork and its juices piled in hot.
• With mustard or hot piri-piri sauce on the side or spread inside.
• As a quick, everyday bite, standing at a café counter or grabbed to go.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the wheat in the roll and the sulphites in the wine.
• Say if the roll is soaked in the pan juices, since that's the defining detail guests expect.
• Note if a spicier piri-piri version is available alongside the classic one.