Portugal 2018: Baffi Bar

Lagos would not be half as enticing if there was no Valentina running Baffi Bar. In Cancun I ride with a group, all be it most do not speak English. In LA I am at my daughters and ride with a group. In Portugal, I meet people on the road and in 2017 I went out to dinner with at least one couple from my guesthouse but really the center of my social life is the staff and customers at Baffi Bar. The chief and Valentina’s significant other, Simoni, cooks wonderful Italian food but he is not a big English talker.

The great good fortune of this year was that when I walked into Baffi for the first time in 2018 on Wednesday night, Valentina told me this was their first night open! I would have been a very sad visitor if they had been closed. I will have to be sure and write about my dates next year! I do spend a little time at Lighthouse bar and restaurant over on at the Marina. They have a usually new set of English speaking bar tenders and waitresses each year. This year Patricia and Isabela were both from Brazil and wonderful.

I went looking for a picture of the 2018 front of Baffi Bar and I do not have one!! Here is one from probably 2016.

Then one I stole from the internet.

And then two historic images from Google street view that show the bar before Baffi, called Stage 53?

The great news from Wednesday night was that I had made it on the wall.

Not many bars with my picture on the wall! Wednesday night I had the new dish, beef tartar in the Jar and then later a brocheto.

Friday night was one of my usuals, Carbonara

Val is not real happy about having her picture taken without a mushstach but I slipped one in and then enhanced it.

Sunday was a Hamberger with the wonderful new addition to the Baffi staff, Ester from Italy.

Ester does different wonderful things with her hair each night. It rolls up and down and one night I even stayed late enough to see her costume change:

Usually I am long gone to bed before they enter this stage. We also started doing desert. One had to order it early or it was all gone. Val makes it special each night and if her shoes are hurting and it has been a long night, no luck with tiramisu the next day. But even in that case there is sometimes a chocolate cake as a substitute.

Coucus dinner Saturday:

One last pictures of Val with friends: