Conservas, Olives, And Salt Cod

The country’s best Portuguese market is in a mill town in Massachusetts?

- Luke Pyenson

“THIS IS NOT ENTRY-LEVEL FISH,” says a smiling Michael Benevides, standing in what has to be the United States’ largest purpose-built bacalhau chamber. It occupies one end of Portugalia Marketplace, the emporium Benevides opened with his father, Fernando, six years ago in Fall River, Massachusetts. The glass-enclosed, temperature-controlled monument to salt cod is just one corner of the ambitious family market, but it perfectly represents the store’s mission to serve the local Portuguese community and to celebrate and share the culinary heritage of Portugal.