Portugalos
53 Bellehumeur St., Gatineau, 819-600-3344, portugalosrestaurant.ca
Open: Tuesday to Friday and Sunday 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday 4:30 to 10 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: main courses $14 to $35
Access: One step to front door, wheelchair-accessible washroom
It’s a long way from Ottawa to Lisbon. Fortunately, it’s not that long a journey to get to Portugalos in Gatineau, which might well be the capital’s only Portuguese restaurant following the recent closure of El Meson in New Edinburgh.
I’ve been to Portugalos twice in recent weeks after making the glum trip down Greber Boulevard, the turn at Les Promenades Gatineau and the turn onto Bellehumeur Street at the sign for Portugalos.
Inside the restaurant, I’ve preferred sitting on its more casual bar side, with its TV turned to a Portuguese sports channel, over the slightly larger and somewhat more formal dining room. In both ambiances, plaintive Portuguese folk plays over the sound system, tables are covered with rooster-decorated cloths, and the service has been attentive. But the bar side has felt to me more in line with the robust, unfancy and at times brusquely seasoned dishes emerging from the kitchen.
Eager to please, Portugalos has lunch and dinner menus, as well as a take-out menu stressing grilled chicken, piri-piri-spiced or otherwise. The dinner menu offers the most choices.
Seafood dishes have impressed the most, including a moist, flavourful grilled sea bass ($22) and a truly tender octopus appetizer ($14.50). Both seafoods came simply garnished with minced, lightly pickled vegetables amid a pool of olive oil.
Grilled sea bass at Portugalos
Grilled octopus appetizer at Portugalos
Other dishes have varied more in quality, but have tended to be generously portioned, assertively salted, and if paprika was called for, heartily seasoned. Proteins on plates have been the stars, with starches and vegetables being more run-of-the-mill.
The eatery’s menu says it can serve roast suckling pig if given several days’ notice. However, the much-sought-after pork dish appeared on the table d’hôte menu ($32.50 for three courses plus coffee) when I had dinner at Portugalos last weekend and it was a good choice, graced with peppery, succulent meat and crisp crackling.
Suckling pig at Portugalos
Paella Valenciana ($28.50) featured deeply saffroned al dente rice could have used a little less salt and more complexity in its seasoning, but its assortment of seafood and still-moist chicken was generous.
Paella Valenciana at Portugalos
During a lunch visit, plump shrimps ($18.50) were unabashedly garlicky, served amid salty broth and very ordinary rice.
Garlic shrimp at Portugalos
At the same visit, a chicken breast ($16.50) served with an appealing, paprika-forward sauce and slices of chorizo beat out a slightly dry but well-flavoured grilled half-chicken ($14).
Chicken breast a la Portugalos
Grilled chicken at Portugalos
A heavily seasoned, somewhat oily stew of braised pork and clams (carne de porco à Alentejana, $19.50) featured cubes of pork of varying tendernesses, a scattering of clams and pieces of pickled vegetable, seemingly from a can or bottle, that added a vinegary pop.
Pork and clams at Portugalos
We’ve generally liked the meal-starters here, beginning with the warmed buns and crostini and the red-peppered compound butter. While that octopus dish was tops, we also thought highly of the chorizo sausage that came to the table in a special earthenware dish, flambéed and flavoured by a grappa-like liqueur ($8.50) and the hearty caldo verde (or potato-and-kale) soup ($4.50), even if seemed to be thickened with corn starch.
Flambeed chorizo at Portugalos
Caldo Verde soup at Portugalos
Deep-fried salt cod croquettes and their shrimp-filled equivalents (both $5 for three) were commendable, ungreasy appetizers. The surf-and-turf of clams and chorizo sausage tasted above all of its big, mouth-filling red sauce ($12.50) and pâté of sardines on baguette were unmistakably briny.
Salt cod croquettes at Portugalos
Clams appetizer and sardine pate at Portugalos
Come dessert time, a server brought display samples table-side. We had to have pasteis de nata, the classic Portuguese egg tart (two for $5), but they would have been better at room temperature or even slightly warmed, we thought. A meringue pudding ($5) didn’t do much for us either, I’m afraid. Our favourite was a slightly more composed dessert of crumbled cookies and whipped cream ($5).
Portuguese tarts at Portugalos
Molotoff, a Portuguese meringue pudding, at Portugalos
Dessert at Portugalos
While the food at Portugalos was somewhat uneven, we appreciated the eatery’s commitment to its homeland (down to the Portuguese bottles on its wine list) and its friendly feeling sufficient to make us want to return there if we were again in the wilds of Gatineau — as close as we’ll come to Lisbon, you might say.
phum@ottawacitizen.com
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