With our move to Urgezes impending and our focus on packing and preparing we decided to put off my birthday celebration until September. I must admit that we made a late night order with Uber Eats and had a boatload of sushi dropped off for an impromptu dinner.

Portuguese restaurants don’t skimp and it was a great diversion from our frantic lives at the time. We even had a few leftovers. We had already created a list of Guimarães restaurants we were interested in trying so picking a post-move destination was as easy as could be. I joked that we got a house for my birthday but Michelle insisted that I get the full meal deal after her birthday extravaganza.

Our early September destination was Norma. Set in the historic center of town, this Michelin recommended (Bib Gourmand) option serves Portuguese food with modern techniques without taking itself very seriously. The interior has an overtly modern aesthetic and if you are lucky enough to get a window seat (we did!) a great view of town.

The seasonal menu was based on the titular Norma’s life and served with explanations about the relationship between her story and each course. The clientele includes many tourists and the waitstaff consistently slipped into English during their explanations (we try to stick with Portuguese in situations like this).

It was fun to guess what might be coming up next based on the graphics. Sometimes we were close to correct and other times we would never have figured out what might be served up. The meal started out pleasantly with a house cocktail and homemade bread and butter.

But things quickly flew into whimsy with the first course as Norma enjoyed some time on the beach!

Serving sizes were generous and left us feeling satisfied.

We really loved the presentation (and taste!) of mini Francesinhas, a very common type of sandwich found in this region of Portugal. They are normally massive heart attack inducing beasts, appropriate for sharing with a friend, not cute nibbles.

The courses continued to impress, showcasing seafood and vegetables while delighting our palates.

In my opinion there were two missteps, the first being that curious baby bottle. It was a cachaça based milky drink. Cachaça itself is a Brazilian liquor with mouth numbing properties. I drank it but it was honestly hard to get down. Sour tasting milk will always be a hard “no” from me!

Thankfully the final savory course was impeccably prepared duck, worth making it through the sour milk.

The dessert course had lots of style and lots of sugar. Maybe Norma had a massive sweet tooth but the sugar (cookies) disguised as dirt was a saccharine bomb I didn’t need. It was really cute to see them dig up our serving though.

We finished up with a coffee and enjoyed burning off some of the sugar as we walked home. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday meal as we started settling into life in the North!