Minho cooking is heavy, green, and unmistakably northern: salt cod, kid roasted on rosemary branches, boiled meats with collard greens, and the regional speciality rojões (chunks of pork marinated in vinho verde and fried with chestnuts and tripe). Wash it down with the slightly fizzy local vinho verde, which is grown in the valleys just outside town.
In the old town the squares around Oliveira and Santiago fill with terraces; for something less touristy, head down Rua de Santa Maria or out toward Largo do Carmo.