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Chiado

Georgia Waters

Bright future: Chiado brings a new style of Portuguese to Sydney.
Bright future: Chiado brings a new style of Portuguese to Sydney.Brianne Makin

Portuguese$$

Sydney loves Portuguese food. That is, if you're talking about blackened, spicy chicken and crunchy, caramelised custard tarts. Beyond these popular specialities, the opportunity here to sample the full spread of Portuguese cooking has been limited. Then, in late February, Lisbon-born siblings Sandra Robinson and Jose Rocha opened Chiado on the ground floor of a Potts Point terrace with Portuguese chef Ricardo Ferreira (ex-Quay and Uccello) in the kitchen. [Editor's note, July 2013: This restaurant has now moved to Pyrmont.]

The idea, Robinson says, is to offer traditional Portuguese food in a relaxed but upmarket way. Much of what's on the menu - the chorizo, the bread, the butter - is made in the restaurant and the produce is grown on the siblings' parents' property. It all sounds highly promising.

The restaurant is colourful but not culturally themed, with brilliant red walls, wooden tables and a bar with stools for those looking for a drink and a nibble. A tiny courtyard in front allows for outdoor dining under fairy lights.

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Recommended: Favas com chourico (broad beans with chorizo).
Recommended: Favas com chourico (broad beans with chorizo).Brianne Makin

Homestyle touches abound. We are warmly welcomed on arrival and, shortly after being seated, presented with snacks to pick at while we look over the menu: a bowl of tiny black olives with fresh mint and coriander, and home-made bread with fresh white butter. Simple, delicious and hospitable.

The menu is designed - in line with dining trends and Portuguese family meals - for everything to be shared. We begin with a series of petiscos, or small plates. Portuguese cabbage shredded and tumbled into a bowl comes with black-eyed peas and a generous slug of extra virgin olive oil beneath fried, crumbled corn bread. It's salty, intensely savoury and addictive. A bowl of tender broad beans and finely diced smoky chorizo is luxuriously paired with a wobbling, slow-cooked egg, its liquid yolk providing a sauce.

Salt cod croquettes, probably the most familiar dish on the menu, are good but would have been better hot, rather than lukewarm. But a plate of fresh sardines, served blackened and smoky on grilled red capsicum and garlic, is a reminder of just how good the fish is when it tastes of the sea instead of oil.

Excellent: Leitao da Bairrada (suckling pig).
Excellent: Leitao da Bairrada (suckling pig).Brianne Makin
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Among the more substantial dishes, we consider ordering Chiado's signature dish for two, the seafood stew cataplana de marisco. Instead, we settle on the cod dish of the day, which serendipitously turns out to be a cataplana for one. The cataplana - a pretty copper dish of two domes that opens like an oyster - arrives at the table, carrying a stew of cod, mussels and prawns in clear broth tasting of brine, white wine and tomato, to be soaked up by slices of sourdough and potato.

There's also an excellent terrine of suckling pig, plump pieces of slow-cooked pork underneath a layer of salty, bronzed crackling, beautifully composed on its glazed earthenware plate with baby vegetables and tiny herbs. And a rich, oxtail stew is brightened by its accompaniments: little rolls of thinly sliced cucumber hiding tiny diced apple and capsicum, along with pears and sweet beetroot.

The wine list offers reasonably priced Portuguese varieties and a sprinkling of Australian bottles, and we finish with glasses of Christmas pudding-scented white port and superb custard tarts.

Could Chiado help usher in a new era of Portuguese food for Sydney? We can hope.

Menu

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Traditional Portuguese served with style.

Recommended dishes

Favas com chourico (broad beans and chorizo), cataplana de marisco para dois (seafood stew for two), custard tarts.

Rating

4 (out of 5 stars) 

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