THE bacalhau arrives and it’s a huge cross-cut cod fillet spreading its wings off the terracotta plate, skin charred and bubbled in some places, drizzled with olive oil in others. Boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, onions and olives all around it.
By now we’ve had the caldo verde, that hot potato broth with kale through it and thick slices of chorizo giving it a smoked hammy autumn flavour.
And, of course, we’ve earlier had bacalhau in salted cod fish cakes form; their mashed potato, pungent filling dipped in egg and fried.
I could mention here that 14-course dinner my Nonna served to my cousin once, every course containing baccala as the Italians call it, and how 30 years later you can still see the shock in her eyes when she tells the story but let’s live in the now.
Today, it’s a sleepy Sunday lunchtime in Edinburgh and through the square window of this little shopfront restaurant we can see a maroon sea of Hearts fans trooping by to go to the game.
When Luca and I came in earlier, there were two guys quietly eating at a corner table, a Spanish football game playing silently on the telly, a bit of whoopy, boppy Portuguese music on the hi-fi, but of the staff there was nobody to be seen. All very Twin peaks.
We stood and we fidgeted, we looked at the photos on the wall, we tried to work if the Portuguese post-it notes meant “back in five minutes” and then, eventually, I went through the back to startle a chef coming out a door.
He called the waiter, a nice young Portuguese guy who came out another door and told us to pick a table. Any table. And then things swung into life. Well, sort of.
OK, it’s a Sunday so what’s the rush. Let’s just say by now though I’ve got a little bit of the fear that comes when you catch restaurants that are very quiet and realise that cold kitchens and cold chefs don’t usually make hot food.
It began well, though. There was a little dish of good olives and those lovely salted snacky lupini beans you get all over the south of Italy and, obviously, Portugal too.
There was a fine sliced white bread to go with it. It was so nice and fresh I asked the waiter where it came from. “Lidl, I think”, he replied. We all chuckled.
Of course we ordered the frango assado no churrasco or piri-piri chicken. Madly, I ordered the francesinha too, a sandwich from Porto, a variation on a French croque monsieur, dubbed the little Frenchie, and billed here as one of the top ten sandwiches in the world. Mistake.
The piri-piri at least is a jointed half chicken, smeared with fiery sauce, served with chips and salad. It’s fine but the chicken is crudely charred, tough, baggy. The sandwich, though, is an extraordinary affair. Layered, toasted, decrusted, topped with cheese and a fried egg, served in a bath of beer and tomato sauce, containing ham and steak and sausage.
We get as far the huge wedge of grisly, fatty, chewy steak inside and abandon it largely untouched. Ugh.
Anything but the most tender, entirely fat free and perfectly trimmed steak in a sandwich is asking for trouble. And this is trouble.
The starters were good, though. Even those little empanada-shaped fritters with small prawns inside.
What we’re left with on the table now is the traditional bacalhau fillet with its salted flakes that flood the palate with a hugely powerful tangy flavour that only a slice of soothing, cool boiled egg, and a chunk of calming potato can salve.
If you like bacalhau you’ll like this. For me it needs a salsa verde, something acidic perhaps, to counter the salt but it’s certainly traditional. Disappointing especially as Tugas Amor has a good reputation.
Maybe we caught them on an off day? Or maybe lunch isn’t their thing.
Tugas Amor Portugese Restaurant
161 Dundee Street
Edinburgh
0131 228 8804
Menu: Traditional Portugese dishes including the bacalhau, rice dishes, olives and lupini beans and the piri-piri. 4/5
Atmosphere: One of those little Edinburgh shopfront restaurants with a home-spun feel and none the worse for that. Too quiet to get a real feel. 3/5
Service: A Sunday lunchtime meal and Sunday lunch pace, very pleasant waiter and relaxed atmosphere though we were the only customers for much of it. 4/5
Price: Starters can be had from just above £3, mains hover around £12 though more can be paid. Reasonable. 4/5
Food: All went a bit pear-shaped with the main courses, though the starters were fine, chefs work best in busy kitchens so maybe an off day. Nothing great. 5/10
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