Situated in St Mary Street Cardiff, is an old-fashioned, rather innocuous little restaurant called Porto’s. As the name might suggest, Porto’s is a Portuguese owned and managed restaurant, and serves up a menu of authentic Portuguese dishes. The menu comprises a wide range of meat ... Read review
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Advantages: Good food, nice atmosphere Disadvantages: Service not so good
Situated in St Mary Street Cardiff, is an old-fashioned, rather innocuous little restaurant called Porto’s. As the name might suggest, Porto’s is a Portuguese owned and managed restaurant, and serves up a menu of authentic Portuguese dishes. The menu comprises a wide range of meat and fish-based dishes, and is a favourite haunt for my colleagues and myself whenever a visit to Cardiff is required.
THE RESTAURANT
...bar or tavern. Situated across two floors, the restaurant is quite intimate, with clusters of wooden tables situated amidst cosy lighting, but providing an advanced booking is made, relatively large groups can also be accommodated. The tavern is decorated throughout with plastic vines, wine bottles and other ornaments – it’s not the most sophisticated establishment but it has a traditional and welcoming feel to it. A tireless soundtrack ... more
Situated in St Mary Street Cardiff, is an old-fashioned, rather innocuous little restaurant called Porto’s. As the name might suggest, Porto’s is a Portuguese owned and managed restaurant, and serves up a menu of authentic Portuguese dishes. The menu comprises a wide range of meat and fish-based dishes, and is a favourite haunt for my colleagues and myself whenever a visit to Cardiff is required.
THE RESTAURANT
The restaurant is decorated rather like an authentic Portuguese bar or tavern. Situated across two floors, the restaurant is quite intimate, with clusters of wooden tables situated amidst cosy lighting, but providing an advanced booking is made, relatively large groups can also be accommodated. The tavern is decorated throughout with plastic vines, wine bottles and other ornaments – it’s not the most sophisticated establishment but it has a traditional and welcoming feel to it. A tireless soundtrack of Mediterranean music babbles away in the background, although on occasion this becomes considerably more mainstream – I spotted Gloria Estefan and Enrique Inglesias singing away.
As you enter the restaurant, a small bar is choked full of wines, beers and spirits, as well as a deluge of football memorabilia – clearly the owners have a keen interest in the national Portuguese team. The area in front of the bar is quite narrow, with only one or two wooden stools. This isn’t generally a problem, unless your group booking arrives early and needs somewhere to wait for some drinks. Up a small wooden step there are a range of tables of chairs – the dining area caters mainly for groups of four, although there is one larger round table. Up the flight if stairs to the second floor is another area of seating, which is situated directly opposite the main kitchen. An estate agent might call this property cosy – I would probably call it cramped, but for an evening of food and drink this is no problem.
THE FOOD
The menu is quite varied, with a number of different dishes to try from. As well as authentic Portuguese starters, there is a large selection of fish dishes, steaks, cooked flavoured chicken, Portuguese style kebabs and even some pasta. There are also vegetarian options – although these don’t stretch much further than a vegetable lasagne and pasta bake. Porto’s is generally regarded very highly for its delicious range of meat kebabs. Having chosen from beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken or a mixture of all five, the meat is brought out on huge metal skewers about half a metre in length. These are then hung from hooks in the wooden beams above your table in order that you may take pieces of the meat off with your fork. Getting the meat off the skewers can be quite a complicated task, and it is generally much easier if you have someone to hold the skewer for you at one end, whilst you desperately drag the chunks of meat off.
Before the meat kebabs are hung up for you to attack, the waiter will take a small serviette which contains a portion of fresh garlic butter and then tie it round the top of the kebab(s). A vigorous rubbing with the cloth means that the heat from the skewers quickly melts the butter, resulting in a delicious drizzle of rich garlic butter, which runs down the meat. Needless to say, the skewers are arranged above a small plate, to prevent the dining table being showered in droplets of garlic butter. The quality of the meat used in the kebabs is absolutely excellent. So that we could try out all the different varieties of meat, we ordered one of each type and shared them between us. The meat was lean, moist and tasty having been chargrilled and cooked to perfection. The kebabs are served with fried potatoes and vegetables – normally this includes deep fried cauliflower, which is inexplicably delicious. Everything is served up piping hot and fresh – and is cooked with care and attention – even the garlic bread is authentically rustic, and is served on large chunky slices of bread with copious amounts of butter.
Most of our starters were also excellent. For all the different courses, there are a number of choices, with seafood a common choice throughout. Between us, we had mussels, Portuguese style spare ribs, mackerel and garlic mushrooms. These were all very nice, apart from the garlic mushrooms, which were decidedly mediocre, floating around in a warm, oily dressing that was quite unappetising. Apart from the kebabs that we ordered, one of my party had a huge bowl of seafood broth, quite unlike anything I have ever seen before. I am not a huge fan of seafood, but Karen was in a state of ecstasy when her meal arrived. It wasn’t so much a bowl of soup as a huge pile of freshly cooked seafood served in a soup-like dressing. There were huge slices of deep-fried calamari (squid) as well as enormous whole shrimps that were the size of pears. It’s the sort of food where you have to be prepared to pull legs, shells and heads off before you can tuck in, but it certainly got the thumbs up from my friend Karen.
The dessert menu was rather limited, with some simple chocolate desserts, sorbet and other European favourites such as Tiramisu. The wine list was relatively short, but we chose a bottle of house white and a bottle of house red, both of which seemed to go down well (and quickly!). The most popular choice of beers was an otherwise unfamiliar brand of Portuguese bottled beer, which also seemed to go down very well.
THE SERVICE
The service in Porto’s is generally below average. The waiters and waitresses are not rude or unpleasant, but the standards are nowhere near as high as I would normally expect in a restaurant. On one occasion, I arrive about ten minutes before the rest of my group, and sat and waited at the bar for a drink in vain until the rest of the party arrived. The layout of the restaurant is such that the waiters seem to be trying to cover a lot of distance, so they always seem very stressed. Upon arrival on my last visit, we were promptly shown to our table, but then had to wait about ten minutes before the drinks order was taken, fifteen minutes for the food order to be taken and then a further fifteen minutes before the starters arrived. This isn’t necessarily a problem if you’re in a large group but I always find delays quite frustrating if I am in a couple. Sitting so close to the kitchen area is also far from desirable as you get all the clanging and crashing noises, as well as all the steam and smells.
HYGIENE
Porto’s is one of those restaurants that probably maintain all the required standards of hygiene, but would still benefit from a good scrub. The wooden tables are quite old and battered and I felt that they would enjoy the occasional wipe. The cutlery, plates and glasses are cheap and old – the side plates are terribly marked and scratched and in the wrong light looked filthy. The cutlery also suffers from much the same thing, which is a great shame because nice food deserves to be eaten off nice tableware. This is definitely not the case here and I would urge the owners to invest in some new stuff.
VALUE FOR MONEY
With drinks, desserts and a couple of coffees, six of us ate on my last visit for £180 – roughly £30 a head. I think this is generally quite a fair price, based on the quality of food and variety of dishes. We didn’t feel particularly obliged to leave a tip for the waiter, purely because he wasn’t really all that friendly.
THE VERDICT
The good food and authentic atmosphere mean that Porto’s is a popular choice with diners in Cardiff, and I would certainly recommend that you reserve a table at the weekend. The kebabs are an essential choice here and always go down well with a new crowd who have probably never seen anything quite like them before. Seafood fans will also enjoy a visit here, with plenty of freshly cooked tasty things to try. The service isn’t fantastic and it isn’t the most well equipped place, but I still recommend a visit – I’ve enjoyed all mine to date.
