MORE INFORMATION Atasca Type: Portuguese Prices: Appetizers $4.00-$6.95; entrees $10.95-$20.95; deserts $2.50-$4.00. Hours: Tues.-Thurs. 11:30 a.m.- 10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. noon-10 p.m. Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diner's Club. Access: Fully accessible. Sunset Café Prices: Appetizers $4.00-$8.00; entrees $8.00-$18.00; deserts $2.00-$4.00 Hours: Weekdays 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight; Sun. noon-11 p.m. Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diner's Club, Discover. Access: Fully accessible. Casa Portugal Prices: Appetizers $5.95-$7.95; entrees $9.95-$14.95; deserts $1.95. Hours: Mon.-Thurs. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. noon-10 p.m. Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diner's Club, Discover. Access: Fully accessible. Portugalia Restaurant 723 Cambridge Street, Cambridge (617)491-5373 Prices: Appetizers $4.95-$6.50; entrees $8.95-$13.95; deserts $2.50. Hours: Mon.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.- 10:00 p.m.; Sun. noon-10:30 p.m. Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover. Access: Fully accessible

Restaurant reviewed 02/12/98 by John Koch

ATASCA
279A Broadway, Cambridge
(617) 354-4355
(Directions)

SUNSET CAFÉ
851 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
(617)547-2938 or 547-4775
(Directions)

CASA PORTUGAL
1200 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
(617)491-8880
(Directions)

PORTUGALIA RESTAURANT
723 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
(617)491-5373
(Directions)

My recent hunt for the best pork and clams entree in Cambridge was both informative and tasty.

Why pork and clams, you ask? Because, like salt cod and certain seafood stews, it's a mainstay of Portuguese cuisine and, prepared correctly, it's mouth-watering, maybe the best surf 'n' turf in the world.

Why Cambridge? It's a city of deceptive diversity, including a substantial Portuguese community that has produced some very good restaurants.

The search took me and various companions to four restaurants, and broadened somewhat to include other traditional dishes. Three of the restaurants are on Cambridge Street between Inman Square and Lechmere, for many years the axis of the local Portuguese community. The fourth is nearby on Broadway, in a locale where you wouldn't expect to find any restaurant, much less one as charming, cozy, and consistently satisfying as Atasca.

We begin with Atasca not because it won the blue ribbon for pork and clams (it didn't), but because it shapes up on many counts as the best of the quartet. This is an attractive, homey space warmed up by the native crockery displayed on the wall, the blond wood tables and chairs, and the evidently happy diners; this place can draw a capacity crowd even on a Tuesday night.

Almost everything we had featured fine, fresh ingredients prepared according to Portuguese tradition. The difference here is a little continental spin-doctoring and Atasca's close attention to presentation.

For example, an appetizer of sauteed squid with garlic, white wine, and lemon juice was more delicate and less oily than the typical treatment. The savory parsley-flecked squid were firm but not chewy. An appetizer of melon and Portuguese ham was distinguished by the wonderfully smoky, mildly salty home-cured meat.

The best entrees we tried included a stuffed quail special, which was very special indeed. The tasty bird was unsually tender and moist, and the stuffing of bread crumbs, St. George cheese, and smoked ham was virtually addictive. Their cataplana (the word means copper steaming pot) was a light, flavorfully briny stew of clams, mussels, shrimp, smoked ham, and linguica (a familiar Portuguese sausage), accented with onions and red peppers. The meat flavors emboldened the seafood broth and enriched it: a lovely balancing act!

Which brings us back, quite naturally, to the subject of pork and clams. No two chefs make it alike, but at its best, the pork pieces are infused with a lemon-or wine-based marinade that renders them tender and tangy, and that marries them happily to the steamed littlenecks and their sea-kissed broth. Sometimes, the dish includes fried potatoes and an assortment of pickled vegetables and olives.

Atasca's version was too good for its own good. By this, I mean the obviously high-quality pork they used was too lean for this potentially glorious peasant stew. And there was no evidence that the meat spent much, if any, time soaking up marinade. They flavored the plate of pork and littlenecks with a pleasant enough gravy that seemed added only shortly before leaving the kitchen.

For an outstanding treatment of this dish, go to the Sunset Cafe, a big bright room with shiny woodwork. Its carne de porco a alentejana (pork and clams) was grand in both senses of the word: delicious and voluminous. It was really enough for two, especially if you've prepped with a few appetizers. The hot Portuguese sausage marinated in wine was a fine choice and, like much of this cuisine, gently, not fierily, spicy.

But back to the main dish.

Here, the pork had been properly infused with marinade, tenderizing and flavoring it perfectly, and the clams were fresh and plentiful. When these primary ingredients arrived at the table, they were concealed under a dome of golden, lightly fried potato cubes ideal for mopping up the Sunset's wine-accented broth. Its version of this plate is interlarded with black olives and tartly pickled vegetables. It doesn't get much better than this.

Oddly, the rather Americanized menu at the Portugalia Restaurant, up Cambridge Street a few blocks, doesn't feature pork and clams. I asked if they had it anyway. They did, and apparently it's always available. Theirs was a palatable version, a tad spicier than the others, which was fine, but served without enough of its tangy, brothy liquid, which wasn't. First-rate, however, was Portugalia's grilled salt cod, a generous portion of the white fish drizzled with garlicky olive oil and served with red potatos and grilled onion slices.

No survey of local Portuguese eating places would be complete without a visit to the venerable Casa Portugal, a sometime favorite of mine over the last 20 years. It's been brightened up since my last visit with crisp white tablecloths and lighting that flatters the wall murals of Portuguese life. The quality of the dishes, which has seemed variable in the past few years, was generally good, especially the arroz de marisco, a nicely balanced seafood stew including shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, and a sweet-tasting half lobster, served with rice. The tomatoey broth had a lightness and delicacy that's the hallmark of the best Portuguese seafood stews.

As for the pork and clams: very adequate, but not top-flight. In its favor, it featured a garnish of pickled carrot pieces, cauliflower, and peppers. But while quite nicely marinated, the pork was too lean to make the dish work as it should.

Lastly, a word about wine. Although something of an acquired taste, Portuguese green wine - slightly bubbly and both a little sweet and a little raw - is a marvelous companion to most of the cuisine. The green wines are all inexpensive. At Atasca, for example, a bottle of the one I favor, Avaleda, costs $12.

But the bottom line is Portuguese cuisine itself, which abounds with dishes that happily qualify as comfort food, but which tend to be more complex and subtle than the term usually implies, and less filling, too.