What to eat on Santa Maria: ear biscuits, the summer meloa and caldo de nabos

Santa Maria's food is easy to miss because none of it shouts from a menu board. The island has a biscuit made nowhere else, a melon with European protected status, a turnip broth that restaurants may need notice for, and a small wine revival in the bays. When you go decides a lot: the melon is a summer fruit, the soups belong to the festival months, and the biscuits keep all year.

A biscoito de orelha is a small, hard triangle with its corners snipped so they stick out like ears. The regional specification for the certified product, published in 2014, says each one is shaped by hand: the dough is wound over the fingers into a triangle and the ears are cut with scissors or a knife. Machines are allowed for mixing the dough and nothing else.

The dough is wheat flour with a little maize flour, eggs, sugar, pork lard, butter and a homemade leaven. After baking, the biscuits are stacked and put back in the oven to dry out, which is why they are hard and keep well. By the specification, a finished biscuit weighs between 8 and 16 grams and tastes mostly of butter and lard. Expect something closer to a rusk than a cookie, good with coffee.

The same document says the biscuit is made only on Santa Maria. It used to turn up at pig-slaughter days, weddings, Holy Spirit festivals and Christmas, when godparents gave their godchildren an extra-large one. Food shops and craft shops on the island sell them in bags, and because they are hard and dry they survive a suitcase well.

The island's other old-fashioned sweets include suspiros (meringues), melindres and cavacas, which are hollow glazed pastries.

The meloa is a small cantaloupe-type melon with orange flesh, usually 800 grams to a kilo. In February 2015 the European Commission registered the name Meloa de Santa Maria (Açores) as a protected geographical indication, or PGI. Each certified melon carries a seal with its own number, which identifies the grower.

The farmers' cooperative told the Portuguese news agency Lusa in 2023 that the melons grow outdoors in potassium-rich soil and are usually on sale from July to September. In 2023 it expected 80 to 90 tonnes. The cooperative now sells the melon on almost every Azorean island and on the mainland, and the season is short: come in June or October and you will probably not find one.

In season, buy one at a supermarket in Vila do Porto and take it to a picnic table. There are tables at Poço da Pedreira and at the São Lourenço viewpoints, and barbecue spots at Poço da Pedreira and Espigão.

Santa Maria grows its own turnip, the nabo da terra. The regional government and the island's farmers' association have been preparing an application for protected designation of origin for it (reported in 2023).

The dish to ask for is caldo de nabos. The turnips are cooked, traditionally in an iron pot, with pork, chouriço, streaky bacon and sweet potato, and the broth is poured over slices of homemade bread. It is home and festival cooking, and few restaurants will have it on an ordinary weekday. Ask by its Portuguese name, and ask a day ahead if your guesthouse or a restaurant offers to make it. The same goes for bolo na panela, a one-pot meal of pork and vegetables cooked with rounds of cornmeal dough.

For fish, ask what was landed that day rather than ordering from the printed menu. Seafood such as limpets depends on legal seasons and the weather.

Vines grow on the terraced slopes of São Lourenço and Maia, and the everyday wine is vinho de cheiro, a light, aromatic wine from American hybrid grapes. Since 2018 a project led by the Vila do Porto municipality has been bringing the vineyards back. Its experimental winery, the Santa Maria Wine Lab, ran with the farming cooperative from 2022 to 2023, and the first Santa Maria wines certified as IG Açores were presented in May 2024 under the name Céptico.

If you are on the island in early September, the harvest festival in São Lourenço is the easiest place to taste local wine. The dates change every year, so check them locally. The bay itself, its viewpoints and how to spend a day there are in our guide to Baía de São Lourenço.

From May, around Pentecost, parishes across the Azores hold Holy Spirit festivals, and the centre of each is a shared meal: bread covered with the broth of beef cooked with cabbage and mint, with the meat alongside. Santa Maria keeps the tradition in its parishes. These are community meals, not restaurants, and each parish sets its own dates. Ask at your accommodation which ones are coming up while you are there. Visitors do join in.

• All year: ear biscuits and the other dry sweets.
• May to early summer: Holy Spirit soups, on dates set by each parish.
• July to September: meloa.
• Early September: the São Lourenço harvest festival and new wine.
• Caldo de nabos: any time, but order ahead.

What food is Santa Maria known for? Biscoitos de orelha, hand-shaped triangular biscuits made only on the island; the meloa, a melon with EU protected status since 2015; caldo de nabos, a broth of local turnips and pork; and vinho de cheiro from the São Lourenço terraces.

When is meloa season on Santa Maria? Usually July to September. Each certified melon carries a numbered seal.

Where can I buy ear biscuits? In food shops and craft shops on Santa Maria. They are hard and dry, so they keep well in luggage.

Can I order caldo de nabos in a restaurant? Sometimes, but it is not a daily dish. Ask for it by name and give a day's notice.