Introduction
Moving to a new country changes almost everything about daily life — including something as basic as what you eat. When you’re setting up a new home, learning a new city, and handling paperwork you’ve never seen before, cooking healthy meals every day is often the first habit to slip.
In this conversation, Elena, founder of RelyOn Relocation®, talks with Alex from Nourish & Nosh, a healthy food delivery service based in Portugal. Alex co-founded the company with his partner, Katalin, after relocating to Portugal themselves from Vienna.
Elena shares her own experience as a client of Nourish & Nosh during a particularly overwhelming stretch of her relocation, and Alex explains how the service works — from the philosophy behind daily fresh-cooked meals to the practical details of pricing, diets, and delivery.
This is a story about something simple but often overlooked: how outsourcing one daily task can free up the energy you need for everything else a move requires.
The Conversation
Elena: Thank you so much for joining me on a Saturday. What are your plans for the rest of the weekend?
Alex: We’re heading to Arrábida later today for a hike, and tomorrow we have a catering job. It’s actually a great time for it — we’ve got 36 degrees right now, so we wait until the evening, around six or seven, and do a hike of about an hour and a half. Afterward, we always stop for a snack at one of the nice restaurants nearby.
Elena: That sounds like a wonderful plan. Let’s get into today’s topic. I want to introduce Nourish & Nosh to our followers, because I think a lot of people don’t realize this kind of service exists here — or how affordable it actually is. Before we get into the details, I’m curious about something I’ve never asked you: why the name Nourish & Nosh?
Alex: The word “nourish” was already in our heads before we even settled on a name — it kept coming up whenever we talked about what we wanted to offer. “Nosh” came afterward, as a playful nod to snacking. Together, the name captures what we wanted: meals that are nourishing, but also fun and joyful.
Elena: I like that. So tell us — who is this service really for, and what exactly do you offer?
Alex: Most of our clients are expats, though we also work with Portuguese clients. A lot of them run their own businesses, so time is limited. They want to eat well without having to think about planning, shopping, or cooking. We cook organic meals from scratch every single morning and deliver them fresh for lunch. So there’s no freezing, no batch-cooking for the week — just daily, fresh food.
Elena: And the variety is something I personally really appreciated. Every day is different, which is almost impossible to manage on your own.
Alex: Exactly. We hear that from clients constantly — it’s hard enough to cook varied meals for a family, but it’s even more of a challenge when you’re cooking just for yourself. Our menu rotates every four weeks, twice a season, with four main courses and a starter each day. Freshness and quality come from cooking daily, not from a big batch made once a week.
Elena: Let’s talk about the different diets you offer, because I’ve actually used more than one of your plans myself — I went from a vegan phase back to a higher-protein diet, and both were covered.
Alex: We have two main lines. One is plant-based — vegan, gluten-free, and cane-sugar-free. The other is flexitarian, which includes fish or meat twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, plus vegetarian meals the rest of the time. Beyond that, we also partner with Dr. Isabel, a nutritionist specializing in gut health, on a low-FODMAP program — two main courses a day, plus infused water that changes daily and repeats every two weeks.
Elena: And everything is very much rooted in the Mediterranean diet, from what I can tell.
Alex: Absolutely — we’re in Portugal, so we work with local products. Simple, fresh ingredients, and we cook with olive oil almost exclusively. We also started a quarterly detox program this year — four weeks, every quarter — which covers breakfast, a bowl, a snack, and a light soup in the evening. We added Sunday yoga sessions and psychologist support through a WhatsApp group as part of that program.
Elena: That last part really struck a chord with me. We recently did a live session with a psychologist about relocation, and one thing that came up is that relocation is, in a real sense, a form of trauma. People often expect to be just as productive as they were back home, without realizing how much energy goes into small things — finding a supermarket, learning where to get fresh food, building a completely new routine.
Alex: That’s exactly it. It’s something people rarely think about in advance, but delegating even a few of those daily tasks to professionals makes a real difference in how much energy you have left for everything else.
Elena: Let’s talk numbers, because I think people assume this kind of service is out of reach — and it really isn’t.
Alex: We have a few programs. The starter option — starter, main course, and dessert — begins at 22 euros a day, delivered fresh every day, which is unusual in this industry. Most delivery services give you a week’s worth of food at once, frozen. We don’t do that.
Our other program is the “360,” which covers the entire day — breakfast, lunch, dinner, everything — starting at 36 euros a day. It’s a weekly subscription, so you can pause or cancel any Friday, and you choose anywhere from one to five days a week, with weekends off (though you can always order a quiche for the weekend if you’d like).
Elena: I actually use a three-day subscription myself — Monday, Wednesday, Friday — since I’m often out for business meetings or dinners. Leftovers cover me on other days, and I fill in with seasonal fruit, which is incredible here in Portugal.
Alex: That’s a great way to use it. And it’s worth mentioning — everything is delivered in glass jars with no plastic in the packaging, and clients simply hand the jars back. We also use a tracking app, so you can see exactly when your delivery will arrive, and we get entrance codes for buildings so we can simply drop the meal at your door.
Elena: That convenience is something I really valued — I could be in the middle of a live stream like this one and just step out for two minutes to collect it.
Alex, that gives our followers a clear picture of how the service works day to day. In part two, we’ll talk about something deeper — how services like this connect to the bigger picture of settling into a new country, why relocation itself is so demanding, and what actually helps people find balance during that transition. Stay with us.
Closing
Food is one of those things we rarely think about until it becomes one more task on an already overwhelming list. As Alex and Elena’s conversation shows, a well-run local service — one that understands both the practical and emotional weight of relocation — can quietly give people back hours of their week and a meaningful amount of energy.
In part two, the conversation turns to what people do with that time: building a balanced life in a new country, and why professional support — whether for daily meals or for the legal and administrative side of moving — matters more than most people expect before they arrive.
RelyOn Relocation® (AMI 24842) helps expats navigate every stage of moving to Portugal, from residency and tax structuring to day-to-day settling in. If you’re planning a move, or already here and looking for support, book a consultation to discuss your situation and the most suitable path forward.
