A Portal to Portugal

ANTONIO CORREIA has been running the successful Portuguese fine dining establishment, Portal, in St John Street, for nine years now. With his son in the role of General Manager and his wife overseeing everything front of house, it is something of a family business – but don’t let that fool you into overlooking just how professional it is. ‘It’s very very professional,’ Correia emphasises. ‘You come in and you see the warmth and character and welcome, but it’s also very business-oriented.’

Correia, who comes from a background in textiles and got into hospitality through his love of wine, is very hands on. ‘I’m at the restaurant every day. Mostly from 9am-9pm. Sometimes from as early as 6:30am and sometimes until as late as 2am. It depends who is off, or if there is a big dinner, or if there are guests who are going to ask for me.’ And many guests do. Although there is a wine list and all of the staff are trained to be able to advise customers, most just ask for Correia to be sent to their table, where he will spend time talking to the guests, assessing their palate and recommending wines – both Portuguese, but also French, Italian and Spanish – to match their taste. Some regulars have never even looked at the wine list!

‘Wines are very simple and yet very complex,’ he says. ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with someone coming in and not knowing much – if anything – about Portuguese wines. All someone needs to know is whether or not he likes a wine and whether or not it meets his expectations.’

For Correia, food and wine pairing is secondary to palate and wine pairing. First of all he will ask his guests what kind of wines they know they like. Then he will pick a Portuguese one that he thinks will suit their palate. ‘I just want to make sure my customers have a good meal with a good wine. I don’t want to tell people: “You’re having this to eat, so you should have this to drink.” Individuals have their own palate. No one should be told what to drink with certain foods. Trying to help people understand Portuguese wines is one thing, trying to educate them is another. Do they want to be educated?

‘It’s a joy for me to go to the tables and have people ask me about the wines. The only real question I put to customers is “How deep to you want to go? How deep is your pocket?” If I have a wine here for £30 which I know will suit a customer’s palate, I am not going to sell him a £60 or £90 bottle. (a) because there’s no need, (b) because he might not get it and (c) because he might call me a name for selling him an expensive bottle!

‘If a wine doesn’t suit a customer’s palate, he won’t understand why it should pair with the food. If he likes the wine and the food is cooked well, there can be no space for complaints; the other way around, there could be. It’s good fun to go to the tables. I always taste the wines with my customers. Sometimes I end up having three or four glasses at different tables, or having a drink with customers I know. There are a lot of regulars.’

And, by that, Correia means clients who will come back three or four times a week for lunch or dinner. ‘It’s a good crowd,’ he smiles. ‘It’s great to see them. I like to take people to their tables as well. We have a receptionist, but most of the time I’ll take people to the table. It’s good to have a little conversation, crack a joke. Then, when they sit down, they feel at home. I think it’s very important. When I need to be straight up and down with all the rules, for business lunches, for example, then I am. I am very professional. But when I can loosen it up a little bit, I like to do that too.’

Portal offers three types of dining experience: a set lunch menu – a two or three course meal – with different dishes every week; an à la carte menu; and tapas – petiscos ­– served at the bar. People at the same table can mix the set menus and the à la carte. The idea is to offer something a little lighter at lunchtime and then a step up in the evenings. The food is Portuguese with a twist. ‘The twist is for people to understand what Portuguese food is all about,’ explains Correia. ‘You have to have a to have a twist if you’re running a restaurant in the City. Not everyone has been to Portugal and understands Portuguese cuisine, so the little twist is going to help them. So, for example, with bacalhau, you have to have a twist here, because otherwise people will think “Ugh, salted cod?!” So we serve it either grilled or marinated and cooked sous vide, served with potatoes and vegetables, which are towards what the Brits like. Also porco preto – Iberian pork. We serve a very tasty shoulder steak, marinated for 18 hours with red wine and vegetables and then slow cooked for 12 hours. It is served with a sautée of broad beans and chouriço and mash. The Brits love broad beans. It’s one of the dishes I’ve not yet managed to get off the menu. It’s so popular. It's traditional but with a twist that people understand.’

Correia describes himself as ‘a little bit Mr Octopus’, running the whole restaurant. ‘My passion is wines, but cooking as well. One thing helps the other. I love sitting at the table, cooking, talking. So running a restaurant, it’s ok. I work with the chefs and put forward ideas and suggestions for new recipes. Sometimes these will produce a fantastic dish; other times a dish that needs to be worked on; and sometimes it just doesn’t work out.’ All the dishes cooked in the restaurant are proposed to Correia and his son, who taste them together with Correia’s wife and the chefs. ‘We're all different individuals, so we all have one thing to say, one thing to add, or one thing to take out. So it moves the recipe forward.’

Correia’s first job in hospitality was some part-time work he undertook while studying, in a well-known restaurant in Cantanhede, called Marquês de Marialva. It was so popular back then that you had to book six months to a year in advance to get a table. When he came to the UK in 1994, he worked first as General Manager at the French restaurant, Le Café du Marché, just around the corner in Charterhouse Square, where he stayed for some 14 years. ‘Food and drink and fine dining, it’s a passion I was born with. My mother was a very good cook. I learned a lot from her – traditional things. And when I used to go to restaurants, I would always pick up on things like service. I’m a person who likes to be served properly. Put that all together and it was the perfect combination for someone to be, as I was at Le Café du Marché, a General Manager. And then, to open Portal, well, I was just singing!’

The wine list at Portal has about 70 different Portuguese wines on it. ‘I’ve got wines from all the regions – north to south – here to offer. I cannot have it all, because then I’d have 10,000 wines on the wine list, but most of them, yes.’ And they’re all sourced by Correia himself. ‘I did some time training in wineries in Bordeaux and Portugal. I love drinking wine and I read about it a lot. Most customers are keen to try Portuguese wines when they come to Portal. I try to get them to taste the French as well, to compare and see the difference, but I am keen to get people to taste the very best of Portuguese wines too. Feedback is always that the Portuguese wines are as good as or better then the French.’ Throughout the day, whenever he gets the chance, Correia will try to taste a little bit of various different wines – wines served by the glass or bottles which are cleared from the table with just a little left in them. He likes to have a sip to discover new things about his wines and to see if they are evolving with age and time. Correia has been collecting wine privately since 1994. His own cellars have a lot of French wines, with some Italian and Spanish. And some Portuguese as well, of course. If people want to buy, he will sell – but not down to the last bottle. They’re not actually on the market though.

Having been in the UK for so long, does Correia still feel Portuguese at heart? Here, he hesitates. ‘I say to people my hometown is London, but I am Portuguese. 20 odd years here is a long time though. I love London. I wouldn’t mind going to Portugal more often,’ he adds, ‘but if you asked me if I would go back to Portugal to live all the time: no. I could spend maybe four or five months there each year, but not all in one go. Maybe three weeks or a month there at a time. But I couldn’t do that because I need to work here.’

Finally, Correia is excited to be involved with TASTE PORTUGAL London 2014/15 and firmly believes that it is a good idea to be promoting other cuisines here in London. ‘London is the capital of food now – believe it or not and want it or not! I know the French don’t like to know that, but it’s reality. This is where everything is happening. All types of cuisine are available. We [the Portuguese] need to play a good role in the town to show what we can do and what wonderful chefs we have.