Sigilo

The street-level lounge. Don't be fooled by the quiet.

Sigilo means secrecy in Portuguese. The name is apt. You may be confused when you first arrive: you enter from the street into a pleasant lounge area, warm and dim, with comfortable armchairs and walls covered in an eclectic collage of clippings, photos, and found objects. It's calm. Perhaps a little too calm. During most of my visits, this room was quiet and largely empty. My instinct, the first time, was that I'd arrived at the wrong place or the wrong hour.

Don't leave. The real action is in the basement.

The basement bar: stone walls, warm light, serious taps.

Walk to the back of the room and descend a flight of stairs, and you'll find yourself in one of the more atmospheric bars in Porto. Exposed granite walls, warm amber lighting, and a long bar with seventeen taps. Seventeen. This is not a place hedging its bets. The board ran the full range on my visits: a house pilsner, a Musa Blond, a St. Bernardus Belgian Quadrupel, a Berliner Weisse, a Scotch Ale, and enough in between to require some genuine decision-making.

Seventeen taps. Take your time with the board.

Everyone who works here has great energy. They'll treat you like family, which in Porto means with a warmth that doesn't require you to earn it first. On one evening, we somehow ended up sharing some chouriço with the bartender and being introduced to Aguardente, the Portuguese fire water, a high-proof brandy that the country keeps for moments exactly like this one. I may have declared that the bartender was my Porto family after sufficient fire water. I stand by it.

The patio is a further surprise. Step outside from the basement and you'll find yourself in a leafy garden in the middle of the Bolhão district, improbably peaceful given its location. Tables under the trees, plants growing in every direction, and if you're lucky, someone's dog wandering over to be petted. Even without the dog, you're still lucky: you're in a quiet garden in the heart of Porto with a good beer in hand. That's a winning situation.

The garden: a genuine surprise in the middle of the city.

The backbar detail. I fell in love with the artwork.

Sigilo sits very close to Armazém da Cerveja. Both are in the Bolhão district, and both are easy walking distance from the Bolhão metro station. They make a natural pairing for an evening: start at one, finish at the other. The Bolhão area is also home to the renovated Mercado do Bolhão, Porto's historic market hall, worth visiting during the day before you settle in for the evening. Praça dos Poveiros is a short walk from here too, and it's got more restaurants packed around it than you could work through in a week. The Chapel of Souls (Capela das Almas) on Rua de Santa Catarina, just a few minutes walk away, is one of the most striking pieces of azulejo tilework in the city, and worth seeing before the bars open.