kimheras

Restaurant Reviews: Porteno

This is the first in a series of reviews I’m going to do on places I’ve checked into using Facebook Places. I figure if I tell you where I’ve been, I may as well tell you how it was.

So here we go:

Porteno

Set in what was, for as long as I can remember, “that Greek restuarant on Cleveland street” - Porteno is an Argentinian Parilla-style restaurant brought to you by the founders of Botega - one of the “it” spots of Sydney food over the past couple of years.

Truth be told I was never a big fan of Botega and its tapas but thought I’d give Porteno a go because of the amazing experiences I’d had at Parillas in Buenos Aires over the years and because of the great reviews it was getting.

With that in mind, I called in the troops (my mum, dad and wife) and headed over to Surry Hills to see what all the fuss was about.

Ambience - 7/10

Nice. open plan, large. A little noisy (my mum and dad were complaining a little at the noise). My dad was also like “there’s so much nice Argentinian music why aren’t they playing it” - but maybe the owners didn’t want to get too literal. The wait staff have taken it upon themselves to be at the vanguard of the Sydney Hipster movement, which gives this place a real Brooklyn feel (i bet those fixies out the front in the pic above are there’s too!)  Overall though, nice .

Service - 8/10

Service was good. Very good actually. Friendly, prompt and helpful. I saw a few familiar faces in the team that used to work at other restaurants I go to, so it would seem that Porteno has attracted some of Sydney’s best

Food - 7/10

Don’t get me wrong, the food was nice, but geez the reality didn’t live up to the hype. For starters, the Pate we had wasn’t the best, the Chorizo was more of an Aussie pork snag than a traditional Spanish cured meat and they charged us $8 for 4 bits of bread…The Empanadas however were delicious, though nothing better than you could make if you set your mind to it at home. What I was really waiting for were the suckling pig and lamb that everyone has been going on about. These were great but, once again, no better than my mum’s slow roasted Sunday lamb, for instance…yum…sorry, i digress…Anyway, the beetroot salad and beans with ricotta were nice sides, and the Tempranillo from Rioja (birthplace of my dad’s dad) went down well - but that’s more to do with Spanish influence than the Argentinian theme.

Value - 5/10

Ewf. $300 for a few entrees, 2 servings of meat and a $60 bottle of wine in what is far from a fine-dining restaurant is a bit of a piss-take.

Final Thoughts

If you’re reading this wondering if you should go to Porteno, the answer is yes if you want to go and have a big feed and piss-up with a bunch of people and don’t really care about the price. You won’t go home hungry, that;’s for sure - and the setting is perfect for a long dinner (especially if you can catch a nice summer evening in the covered internal courtyard area). That having been said, there are rumours of people getting kicked out for the next seating, though we weren’t asked to leave. We even got there at 6:30pm to avoid the rush (the earliest I’ve had dinner in years) but by 8pm the tables still weren’t full. That may have been because it was a Tuesday or because the hype is dying down.

Back to the final thoughts though…if you want to go out for a good value meal, to try something new and special, or for a romantic night out, then Porteno probably isn’t the place for you.

Will I go back? Maybe - but not for a while.