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 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.

THE FOOD

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.

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.

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.

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 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.