Porteno

Porteno has recently been awarded the Best New Restaurant by the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide. My friends and I booked for dinner about 6 weeks ago, before the awards were published. Thank goodness!

This restaurant is truly one of the current 'happening' restaurants in Sydney. We managed to reserve a table because there was to be 6 of us (Porteno accepts bookings for 6 plus more). Otherwise it is a first come, first served basis. We have been looking forward to this dinner and I can say we were not disappointed with the food.

When I arrived at the restaurant there was already a queue of people waiting to get a table for the 6pm seating. I had to take a picture of the line up. I must apologise in advance for some of the pictures, it was a dark room and the images did not turn out as clearly as I would have liked.

The first thing that captured my attention was the 2 racks of suckling pig slowly roasting at the very large and hot fireplace. What an image! This place is not for vegetarians, you really need to have an inkling for meat to truly appreciate what this Argentinian restaurant has on offer.

We started our meal with a basket of bread, olive oil, lots of marinated olives, pork pate, chimchirri sauce and salsa. The starters we chose were Smoked Mackerel with avocado, palm hearts and pickled celery, BBQ Eggplant with tahini and BBQ calamari with chickpea sofrito.

Bread, olive oil and pork pate

Smoked mackerel

BBQ Eggplant

We then moved on to the mains and we chose Blood Sausage with red peppers and garlic (yes I did try it and I actually liked it), Angus Beef Short Ribs (tasty), 8 hours woodfired free range suckling pig (very nice by the way) and 8 hour woodfired free range lamb (talk about melt in your mouth!).

Woodfired suckling pig

Blood sausage

Fried brussel sprouts

Woodfired lamb

Beef short ribs

We ordered 2 sides: the famous Crispy fried brussel sprouts with lentils and mint & Grilled root vegetables with radicchio.

After all that food, some of us found a spot in our tummies to have dessert. PK and I had the South American Style Pavlova and others had the Burnt Milk Custard with orange jam and chocolate ice cream.

Burnt milk custard with orange jam

South American style Pavlova

I can only say that my dessert was seriously, scrumptiously delicious. My dish of the evening was my dessert. It was surprising to look at, beautifully layered and what amazing textures. The combination of meringue, sponge cake, salted caramel and nuts and vanilla custard was just delicious!

My only minor issue with Porteno was that it was very noisy and I could hardly hear what my friends were saying through the night. Other than that, it was a lovely evening of hearty, rustic food with good fellowship.

If any of you have dined at Porteno, I would love to hear from you. Maybe you had something else that was a highlight.

Porteno
358 Cleveland Street
Surry Hills
NSW 2010
Website: http://www.porteno.com.au/