Bifana Period COrigin theory CVerified

A bifana is a Portuguese popular sandwich: thin slices of pork simmered, or grilled, with garlic and white wine, then placed in a bread roll. It has long been a fixture of the tasca (tavern), the café, and the street stall, a fast food to fill the stomach cheaply and quickly.

Pork and bread were both everyday things in Portugal from early on. In the twentieth century, as everyday bread became widely available and taverns and stalls began to serve it, the bifana took shape as a portable workers' meal. The garnishes and the way it is served differ from town to town, but the frame is shared: thin pork, seasoned with garlic, in a roll.

There are two views of where the bifana was born.

One is that it originated in Vendas Novas, in the Alentejo region east of Lisbon. This was a town of active pig-rearing, with cheap pork in plenty. Its roadside tascas are said to have begun serving the sandwich in the twentieth century as a portable meal for workers, travellers, and the garrison soldiers nearby; local establishments such as Café Boavista and A Chaminé claim to be the first.

The other view holds that no single town can be given the credit, and that the bifana developed in parallel across the taverns and cafés of several cities as a twentieth-century popular fast food: in Porto (the juicy form at the Conga establishment, the bread soaked in the cooking liquor), in Lisbon and the south (served with mustard or piri-piri). From this standpoint, the difference between the Porto style and the Lisbon-Alentejo style is mainly one of serving and seasoning.

The best-known place today is the Conga establishment in Porto, but this is a famous surviving venue rather than the place of origin, and the two are kept apart.