Olá pessoal, fellow coffee aficionados and tea enthusiasts! If you’re visiting Portugal – or just dreaming of it – one of the first things you’ll notice is how important coffee and café culture are in everyday life.
But ordering isn’t always as simple as asking for “a coffee” or “a tea”. Portugal has its own names, its own habits, and its own little café traditions.
Mas espera aí! Don’t worry – I’ve got you.
In this lesson, I’ll guide you through exactly how to order tea and coffee in Portugal, using the real phrases locals use every day. Whether you prefer a strong café or a comforting chá, you’ll soon be ordering with confidence and sounding much more natural.
So let’s step into a Portuguese café together and get you ready for your next order. In this lesson, you’ll learn practical phrases for ordering tea, coffee, and hot drinks in Portuguese – just like you’d need in a real café in Portugal.
We’ll focus on natural, everyday sentences used in cafés and coffee shops so you can order with confidence and understand what people might say back.
By the end of this lesson you’ll be familiar with:
✔ Polite ways to request drinks
✔ Typical café vocabulary
✔ Portuguese you can use in real conversations
Tea Drinkers
If you’re a tea drinker, you can say:
Queria um chá, se faz favor. (I would like tea, please)
Que chás tem? (What teas do you have?)
If you drink black tea with milk, then say:
Queria um chá preto com um pouco de leite frio à parte. (I would like black tea with a little bit of cold milk on the side.)
Listen to the video next for the pronunciation.
Coffee Drinkers
If you drink coffee, the 4 most popular coffees to order in Portugal are:
- Meia-de-leite = coffee with milk/flat white
- Abatanado or Americano = It’s like an Americano but with a little less water
- Galão = very much like a latte but a little smaller
- Café = expresso
How to order them?
Queria uma meia-de-leite, se faz favor. (I would like a coffee with milk/flat white, please.)
Queria um abatanado, se faz favor. (I would like an americano/black coffee, please.)
Queria um galão, se faz favor. (I would like a latte, please.)
Queria um café, se faz favor. (I would like an espresso, please.)
Cultural Insight
If you are curious about how Tea is viewed here, I have a dedicated post where I explore Tea Culture in Portugal.
If you want to know about all the different coffee names we have in Portugal, I created an inclusive list for you. Including regional differences! Check these out now.
Have a Patreon subscription? ☕
If you’re an active supporter on any of my Patreon tiers (starting with Meia-de-Leite), you get access to a printable PDF containing all the vocabulary from this post.