Pastel de nata gluten free? Francesinha and Portuguese food

In Portugal, the danger is not where you expect it. The savoury table is often friendly: grilled fish, rice, potatoes, salt cod. It is the street classics that cause trouble: pastel de nata (wheat in both pastry and custard), francesinha and bifana (bread above all), and a good share of the pastries. Here is what to know dish by dish, and where to eat each one safely in Lisbon, Porto and beyond.

This guide is about the food. For the country itself (the national association, cities, the phrase to know), read our guide to gluten-free travel in Portugal.

Pastel de nata gluten free: the pastry and the custard

People often think the problem with pastel de nata is its puff pastry. True, it is made with wheat flour. But that is not all: common recipes also thicken the custard with wheat flour, alongside cornflour and egg yolks. Removing the pastry is not enough. And in an ordinary pastelaria, the tarts bake among croissants and other pastries.

So you need a pastel de nata made gluten free. Two routes:

From a dedicated bakery. Several in our listings make them:

• Padaria Celícias, Vila Nova de Gaia (across the river from Porto), a 100% gluten-free bakery-café certified by the Associação Portuguesa de Celíacos (APC), with pastéis de nata, bread and croissants (see the listing);
• Com Cuore, Porto, a 100% gluten-free tea room that reworks Portuguese classics, pastel de nata included; its Google rating (3.9/5 from nearly 1,500 reviews) is lower than most of our places, and our check covers gluten safety, not the experience (see the listing);
• Alva Bakery, Ericeira (on the coast north-west of Lisbon), a 100% gluten- and lactose-free bakery run by a mother and son who are both coeliac, APC-certified, 5/5 (see the listing);
• Gluten Free Express, Funchal (Madeira), a 100% gluten-free grocery that sells pastéis de nata (see the listing).

In Lisbon itself, our listings do not explicitly mention pastel de nata. Rice Me Deli, a 100% gluten-free, APC-certified pastry shop, advertises “traditional Portuguese sweets”: ask on site.

From the supermarket. Pingo Doce sells “Pastéis de Nata sem Glúten” under its Pura Vida brand: the product page is on the chain’s website (checked in September 2026). They were launched in 2013, frozen, in partnership with the APC. We could not check availability store by store: look at the label and the freezer aisle.

Francesinha: bread, sausage and a secret sauce

Porto’s francesinha is a sandwich of sliced bread filled with ham, linguiça, fresh sausage and steak, topped with melted cheese and drowned in a hot sauce. Three possible sources of gluten:

• the bread, obviously;
• the sausages and linguiça: the APC names enchidos (cured sausages) among the ingredients that make Portuguese dishes unsuitable, and the Spanish federation FACE lists chorizo and sausages among products to check;
• the sauce, made, depending on the recipe, with beer, tomato, stock, port or brandy, sometimes thickened with cornflour. Well-known houses keep their recipe secret, and ordinary beer contains gluten.

In other words, a gluten-free francesinha is not improvised by taking the bread away. Two places in our listings make a real one:

• Com Cuore, Porto, which offers gluten-free francesinha and bifana (see the listing);
• Paladares Vegan, Braga, a vegan and 100% gluten-free restaurant serving a vegan, gluten-free francesinha and gluten-free beer, 4.9/5 (see the listing).

Bifana, prego and sandwiches: bread first

The bifana (marinated pork in a roll) and the prego (steak in a roll) are the classic Portuguese snacks. Their problem is simple: the bread is wheat. The marinade varies from house to house; even served without bread, on a plate, the meat has cooked on the griddle where the rolls are toasted.

Com Cuore in Porto makes a gluten-free bifana. In Lisbon, Café do Rio, near Praça do Comércio, is a 100% gluten-free, APC-certified burger restaurant with homemade buns and sauces: not a bifana, but the same need, 4.6/5 from more than 2,000 reviews. Its listing flags one point only: the beer, to be checked.

Bacalhau, fish and rice: often safe, not always

This is Portugal’s good news. Salt cod, grilled fish (sardines, sea bream, sea bass), octopus, potatoes and rice contain no gluten. But the recipe matters:

• Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá and grilled cod: cod, potatoes, onion, egg, olives, oil. No gluten ingredient.
• Pastéis de bacalhau (salt cod fritters): common recipes bind cod, potato and egg, without flour. The risk is the fryer: in a café, they often share oil with breaded rissóis and croquettes.
• Bacalhau à Brás: cod, egg, onion and straw potatoes. The APC specifically mentions “some pre-fried potatoes”, alongside savoury snacks and breaded food, among the foods with gluten whose frying oil should not be used for your dish.
• Bacalhau com natas: it is covered in béchamel, a sauce usually thickened with wheat flour.

Some rice dishes and stews deserve a warning, because the APC names them itself. On its page about eating out, the association explains that dishes “based on naturally gluten-free foods” are normally off-limits to coeliacs because of what is added: arroz de marisco (because of “delícias do mar”, i.e. surimi), caldeirada (because of kitchen stocks), feijoada and cozido à portuguesa (because of farinheira and other sausages), and empadão (minced meat processed on equipment that may have handled gluten). Add alheira, the sausage from Trás-os-Montes: the specification for the PGI “Alheira de Mirandela” includes wheat bread among its main ingredients.

The APC also warns about soups, which may contain stock, a base prepared with gluten, pasta or croutons not mentioned on the menu.

Convent sweets: eggs are not enough

The so-called convent sweets are built on egg yolks and sugar, often with almonds. You might think they are safe; many are not, because they rely on a pastry or a flour: pão de ló is a sponge made with flour, Sintra’s travesseiros are puff pastry.

The most instructive case is ovos moles de Aveiro, protected by a PGI. Their specification limits the raw materials of the filling to egg yolk, sugar and water. They can be sold in two ways: in small wooden or porcelain barrels, or wrapped in a hóstia (obreia), a thin wafer shaped like a shell or a fish. That wafer is made from “flour, water and vegetable fat”, without the text specifying which grain. In a barrel, the filling contains no gluten ingredient according to the specification; in its wafer, treat it as at risk unless the label says otherwise. And in a pastelaria, contamination through the display case is still possible.

For worry-free sweets, dedicated places are the answer: Despensa N.6 in Lisbon (a gluten-free pastry shop, APC-certified according to our sources), Happy Cookie in Porto (APC-certified), or Boca de Leão in Póvoa de Varzim, a certified pastry shop founded by a mother whose daughter is coeliac.

Our places in Lisbon and Porto

Portugal has 30 verified places in our listings, 27 of them dedicated. Lisbon has 7; besides those mentioned above:

• Tapioca World, a small family-run Brazilian restaurant, entirely gluten free thanks to tapioca flour, 4.9/5;
• Grom and Scoop Gelato, two ice-cream shops certified by the APC according to our sources;
• a counter-example: Rice ME, the restaurant next to Rice Me Deli, has a certified gluten-free menu but a mixed kitchen; we class it as “gluten-free menu”.

In Porto, 100 Culpa is a 100% gluten-free café-restaurant in a garden in the centre, 4.7/5 from more than 1,300 reviews, alongside Com Cuore and Happy Cookie; Celícias is just across the Douro. Everything is covered in our guides to Lisbon and Porto, and on the map.

APC certification: what it guarantees

Most places mentioned here are certified by the APC, in partnership with Biotrab, a food hygiene and safety company. The process includes an audit of the premises where gluten-free dishes are prepared, before and after the procedures are put in place, training for the whole team, then annual renewal with a review of procedures, training and an audit. Certified venues display the APC/Biotrab seal on the door or window.

As elsewhere, the seal can apply to a menu in a mixed kitchen: Rice ME is the example. That is why every Nutrixe listing also says whether the kitchen is dedicated.

In short