Portuguese menu follows the coastline
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The American craze in the last couple of decades for Italian and French foods left Portuguese cuisine out of the loop. Too bad, from one angle. But looking at it another way, the fact that dishes such as piri piri shrimp or pork with clams are less known than, say, spaghetti Bolognese, means that the American penchant for tinkering - updating, fusing, pushing the exotic into the mainstream - has bypassed most of the Iberian cuisine.
So chef and co-owner Guida Ponte's move to showcase the dishes of her homeland in an upscale restaurant seems fresh and new. Although Portuguese restaurants in Cambridge have pleased diners for generations, most of them are fairly modest establishments with menus that change little from year to year.
Ponte, who was executive chef at Legal Sea Foods for 18 years, and her husband, Edward Micu, set out to take a seasonal approach to the cuisine and to concentrate on its seafood. In a phone interview, she says she draws on her childhood on a big farm in the Azores off Portugal where her family ate everything fresh and preserved for all seasons.
This space in Concord Depot, formerly occupied by Aigo Bistro, must be challenging to decorate with its several rooms on several levels. But the bright hues, clever design elements and comfortable seating unify the rooms and make the restaurant feel cozy.
Ponte certainly knows her fish. She's brave enough to put lesser-known species out as specials and serve them whole, even in the landlocked suburbs. One evening, sea bream was simply roasted, very straightforward and quite delicious, and imaginatively accompanied by a little pumpkin filled with souffled potatoes. Squid is marinated in herbs and then grilled, so carefully handled that it's perfectly tender. Its smokiness is accentuated by a salad of mixed greens with a pleasantly sharp vinaigrette. A Chilean sea bass, ubiquitous by now on local menus, is pan-fried to seal in its moistness and then gets a gloss of orange flavoring and allspice before being braised. The spicing is good, but the fact that the bass is all silken delicacy is better.
Although we gravitate toward the seafood on the menu, that's not all there is. Grilled quail is a winning little bird, richly sauced with a wine reduction, although I find it difficult to discern any lingering hint of lavender that is supposed to have flavored the marinade.
The Portuguese specialties scattered through the menu are intriguing. In one, a big chunk of pork tenderloin, first grilled slowly over wood chips to give it a distinctive smokiness before being stewed with vegetables, is tender enough to eat with a fork, and sits in a shallow pool of tomato broth flecked with cilantro. Small littleneck clams float in the broth, making the dish the Portuguese version of surf and turf. It's much more appealing actually than steak and lobster since the salty essence of the clams matches the almost smoky taste of the pork and the tomato broth ties the two together.
Delicious piri piri shrimp grabs the attention in a dish with salt cod risotto. Its bold spiciness seems a zany departure in a cuisine that's mostly tempered, and Ponte explains later that San Miguel island where she's from is known for spiciness and she brings peppers back from there. The risotto, or at least that word, must have been used because we've all become accustomed to the Italian version of rice. But combining it with salt cod is an idea that doesn't translate well in any cuisine. This is almost unbearably salty. A pity the shrimp couldn't have had some more neutrally flavored starch to play off. Linguica comes grilling on the way to the table over a small clay brazier. It's a little alarming, especially when the flames refused to die for a couple of minutes, but the result is worth the danger - great hits of authentic spiciness and heat.
Bolo de Sertao, or white corn flatbread baked with cheese, caramelized onions and tapenade, is another curious dish. The bread, very dense in texture, is baked in clay. It's an appealing taste, especially with the soft cheese; but the texture is really too chewy to eat easily, making it a frustrating experience.
Then some of the dishes are just bland. Sole stuffed with spinach and crabmeat and dusted with crumbs makes a pleasant but conservative meal. Cod, which the menu says was baked in a clay pot, comes with just a sprinkling of buttered crumbs and no discernible seasoning at all, not even salt or pepper. I'm forced to concentrate on the roasted potatoes and peppers instead. Ponte's roast potatoes on many of the entree plates are masterful, very brown and crusty on the outside, creamy white on the inside. She could develop a restaurant around those alone. But the cod needs something to perk it up.
That reminds me of the wild mushroom flan in roasted tomato sauce, a dish that did fine on the flavor side but comes cold on one visit. Warm might have been nice; room temperature would be dandy, but cold tastes as though it's been just pulled from the fridge.
The wine list sports many from Portugal, with some quick but good descriptions to match them to food. The prices are very reasonable. The best dessert is a cheesecake with a sweet-tart compote of cranberries and apricots on top. The cheesecake is on the light side and the compote a great accent note. The flan is creamy and satisfying, too.
But getting to dessert can be tricky. Guida's biggest problem isn't the now-and-then too bland dish or even chilliness, but the timing. On several nights, we could have, as one friend says, taken a nap between courses. There's a note on the bottom of the menu which at first glance seems one of those platitudes: "Please allow our chefs time to prepare your meal...." I trust Ponte when she says everything is fresh: The taste proves that. But a long wait at the entrance as the hostess flitted from room to room to the extended pauses between courses on weeknights as well as weekend evenings gives the feeling of a harried, disorganized organization.
Ponte's food is worth a wait, but less of one would make the experience better.
