Eating Like Royalty on $118

My wife and I just reached our five-year anniversary on Dec. 7. Apparently, that’s the “wood anniversary,” so we celebrated with… fish.

Raw fish, to be precise.

As in sushi.

We’d learned a few weeks earlier that a local, high-end sushi joint we both love was flying in a whole, bluefin tuna and carving it up as part of a celebration. The restaurant owners were closing the entire eatery for the night, and only allowing in a certain number of diners to participate in an event in which everyone would taste all the different pieces of the tuna, freshly prepared right from the fish.

“That’s where I want to go for our anniversary. I’ve never done something like that. I want to do that,” my wife exclaimed.

Which is how we ended up spending three hours watching sushi chefs expertly carve up an entire, 396-pound tuna and snarfing down some of the freshest sushi we’ve ever had. We had some of the most melt-in-your mouth tuna scraped by spoon from the spine, a cut you rarely find in most sushi joints, as well as bone marrow scraped from a spine that had been aged for weeks, and served in a ponzu sauce (fabulous, by the way).

Our cost: €100 per person, or about $118.

I let you in on my anniversary dinner to make a larger point: Affordability.

I’ve noted this few times over recent years, but I am always dumbfounded by the degree to which costs in America have jumped the shark. I left the US in 2018 and I’ve returned, usually once a year, since then, and the prices are markedly and noticeably higher every time.

When I was in Portland at the International Living Bootcamp conference back in September, I popped into a Safeway supermarket just to price the items I would normally buy on a typical trip to the grocery store. I was up over $100 after just 20 items—and I’m talking basics like cereal, eggs, bread, milk, fresh veggies, chicken breast, ground meat, etc.

I priced the same items at the supermarket I shop at in Braga, Portugal, where I live, and the tally barely crossed the equivalent of $76. In all, groceries in Braga were 31% cheaper. In many cases, the products were identical: Helmann’s mayo, Heinz ketchup, Orowheat bread, the mini-cans of Coke Zero, and Oreos (for the kid, not me).

The same holds true with other lifestyle expenses here in Portugal.

I just received an email from my health insurance provider. My rates are going up for 2026 on what would be a Cadillac policy in the US: 100% coverage inside the network for a family of three, no deductibles, and a maximum annual co-pay of €500, about $582 at the moment. My monthly cost: the equivalent of $362—way, way below what I was paying just for myself back in 2017 in Louisiana and California for far inferior, basic coverage with huge co-pays and painful deductibles.

But groceries and insurance—those aren’t the fun stuff of relocating your life abroad.

It’s restaurants and travel where the joys begin. I’ll touch on travel some other time. Today, however, as we approach Christmas and we all have food on the brain, I want share what dining out is really like in a place like Portugal.

That anniversary sushi meal, I honestly have no idea what that would cost at an equally high-end sushi joint in the US. I’ve never had a similar experience at a sushi bar back home. I will bet, however, it’s more than $118 per person for a 10-course meal of sushi prepared various ways, along with specially prepared appetizers.

Back in Cascais, a beach community west of Lisbon and where we first lived when he moved to Portugal in 2023, we found a seaside seafood eatery that had the best sea bass sauteed in a brown-butter sauce and served with rice so good that I unsuccessfully begged a waitress to sneak me the recipe. Every time we stopped in for lunch or dinner, we’d have that and split a liter of sangria and share a dessert. Price for two: $31.

Down in the Algarve, in Lagos, we found a clifftop restaurant overlooking the beach and ocean below. A big bucket of drunken clams in a buttery garlic-wine sauce with freshly baked bread, easily enough for two: under $20.

A bottle of local wine, under $7. But that needs some perspective.

Local Portuguese wines are, on the whole, substantially superior to US wines on the whole. I am not including high-end California cult Cabernets and some of the boutique Pinots and whatnot coming out of California’s Central Coast. I’m talking about just your everyday normal, supermarket-quality wines.

Here, a $7 bottle will compete very well against a $30 to $50 bottle in the States, and I say that having ghostwritten a book on investing in high-end wines, and once have owned a 600-bottle collection in investment-grade wines from California, Spain, France, and Italy.

I’ve recently found a pastelaria here in Braga—a breakfast-y kinda joint—in the center of the city where my wife and I can each grab a cappuccino and a pastel de nata (egg custard pastry) and a tosta mista (grilled ham and cheese sammy)… all for less than $10.

And certainly my favorite of all the eateries I’ve hit in Portugal: Canto do Lobo in the tiny town of Caminha, an hour north of us on the Spanish border.

The restaurant is small, the menu is smaller, and everything is cooked to order in an open kitchen. The slow-roasted short ribs I’ve had twice—divine—and I’m plotting a return visit over Christmas. Because this is the kind of place you want to find on a chilly winter’s night… wander in and warm yourself by the old, stove-pipe fireplace… order a bottle of wine… and just chill with your favorite person while the chef prepares a fantabulous offering of food.

For my wife and I, we spent less than $40 for a meal that would have anyone saying, “Damn—that was good!”

And that, too me, is one of the true joys I’ve found in tooling around Portugal—the food.

Certainly, not every restaurant is worthy of anything other than milquetoast “meh, whatever.”

But then again, there’s the chance you accidentally happen upon an exceptional restaurant made all the more special because you leave thinking, “How did I just have that meal for that price?”

Now, I’m hungry for slow-roasted short ribs…