Since moving to the Outer Cape a few years ago I’ve enjoyed encountering the influence of Portuguese culture here. There’s the annual Blessing of the Fleet and the generations of Portuguese family names that fill Provincetown’s history. But many of my discoveries, it seems, have to do with food. The malassadas at the Portuguese Bakery and the caldo verde and flippers at Liz’s Café are some of my favorites. Recently I found seedlings of couves, a beloved type of Portuguese kale resembling collards, at Bayberry Gardens in Truro.

A few weeks ago, I followed a friend’s recommendation and stopped at Portugalia on a trip off Cape. It’s a beautifully designed food hall — think a Portuguese version of Eataly — in Fall River, just off Route I-195. The business was founded in 1988 by Azorean immigrant Fernando Benevides in his garage. His children, Michael and Jennifer, opened their 20,000-square-foot incarnation of the grocery and wine shop in a former textile mill in 2013.

The first thing you notice upon entering the space is a giant Galo de Barcelos — an oversized version of the rooster that has become a symbol of Portugal — surrounded by stacks of painted earthenware plates and serving dishes, which ended up in my cart pretty quickly.

Next, you’ll see rows and rows of tinned seafood: some with traditional 19th-century designs and others sporting contemporary, and very cool, graphic labels. It’s hard not to buy too many of them. Note to reader: I failed that test, too.

A bakery counter serves traditional pastries such as custard-filled pastel de nata and sandwiches. At another station, local cooks, mostly women known for their home cooking, prepare hot dishes. Their specialties include roasted octopus and bacalhau à Gomes de Sá (a casserole of salt cod, scalloped potatoes, onions, sliced egg, black olives, and lots of olive oil) — “a classic recipe that’s the centerpiece at every Portuguese party,” says Michael Benevides. He was proud to report that their version of the dish made the New York Times list of “23 of the Best American Dishes of 2023” last December.

Since it would be a while before I’d be back home, I was seduced into filling my cart mainly with pantry items that would keep for the journey. There was the tinned fish, of course, but also canned green fava beans, piri piri sauce, tomato-garlic marinade, Azorean bottled pimenta peppers, Portuguese allspice, dried lupini beans, carob pods, and, of course, olive oil. Most every item was something I had never seen before.

The glassed-in salt cod room is one of the store’s more distinctive spaces. “At the previous location, we had a more traditional wall of cod hanging on hooks out in the open,” says Benevides. “But when we built the new market in 2013, I wanted to create an elevated space where the various cuts of cured fish are presented on marble to honor the long relationship of the Portuguese people and cod.

“I also wanted to mitigate the scent for our newer clientele,” he laughs. The range of bacalhau loins was astounding, but here was an item I probably didn’t want to stash in my car for the week.

I watched as a couple from New York City on their way home from the Cape loaded their shopping cart with wine. With 1,400 different Portuguese labels in stock, the store’s selection is the largest of its kind in the country, Benevides tells me. Portugal’s dynamic winemaking scene, he says, encompasses both traditional vintners and makers of natural wine. Right now, Azorean wines, especially whites from the island of Pico, are trending, he says. The vineyards there are on volcanic terrain, with vines often grown within small stone-wall enclosures to protect them from Atlantic winds.

Benevides says the demographics of Portugalia’s clientele have changed since his father started the store. Food magazines like Saveur and others “have put Portugal on more Americans’ travel list,” he says. And people just back from their travels come in looking for some of the ingredients they enjoyed on their vacations.

It may not be the same as a trip to Lisbon, Sintra, or Porto, but for a place that’s between the Bridge and Providence, Portugalia is completely transporting.

Portugalia Marketplace is at 489 Bedford St. in Fall River.