PortoGrill
CHICKEN ON CHARCOAL
In the Portuguese
Welcome all the new restaurant PortoGrill!
Come taste our food over charcoal in the dining room with an ambience to discover or simply stay in the comfort of your home and order online.
Bon appetit!
My husband and I went there on a Saturday evening with another couple. We ordered the steak plate as the main dish, and requested that it was cooked medium well.
We also ordered the tapas plate as appetizer, the menu said it was two tapas of cod and two shrimps. After waiting for about 20 minutes the waiter told us they had only one cod tapas left and that we would better take 3 shrimps instead because it would take at least 20 minutes more to have cod tapas done. We took it (we were starving) the filling of the shrimp tapas was cold (the tapas itself was deep fried but the filling was cold as if the shrimp was frozen and did not stay long enough in the frying machine to get completely cooked).
The bread they serve together with the olives (appetizer) is not Portuguese; it’s ordinary bread which was brought to the table cold.
It took super long for the steak to get done, as per the waiter the delay was due because we requested it to be medium well. But for our surprise when the two steaks came they were completely soaked in blood! We requested the waiter to take the steaks to the kitchen and ask them to cook them more. The second time there was still a lot of blood in the steak, red inside almost not cocked. We then told the waiter that we would take the steaks to go (and grill them at home). She replied saying that ‘we are famous for our steak’ (which we found funny since the place was almost empty for a Saturday evening).
Once the cooker (we assume owner of the place) knew we requested to take the steak home he came to our table to lecture us on how we should know that an 18oz steak could not be cooked as we asked. The funny thing is that nowhere in the menu they mentioned the size of the steak; neither the waiter told us in the first place it could not be cooked as we want (otherwise we would have selected another plate). He told us that an 18oz steak being cooked in the charcoal could not be done medium well, which is R I D I C U L O U S.
Long story short the cooker/owner offered us not to pay for our meal at all (us and the couple who were with us), then told us that next time we could go to another restaurant!! (As if we would be planning to come back there again after that disastrous evening!!!!). They did not apologize for us not being able to eat the meat and having to leave their place feeling hungry!
This place is far from a real Portuguese one as those in the Portuguese district in Montreal. The food is pricy for the quality and the quantity you get (our steak plate came with ¼ of a cooked potato and 3 asparagus) and the service was ok. The only Portuguese thing in this restaurant is the fado music playing in the background.