Friday January 10, 2014
We read in the Standard Times on Thursday that they visited the Tia Maria Portuguese Restaurant recently, and they give it a very high review. I like Portuguese food, so I was excited to try it out.
Mom and I arrived at the downtown restaurant around 5:30 PM. We found the restaurant using our GPS. It is just behind the Whaling Museum.
It was a rainy night, and the cobble stones were very slippery. Mom and I held each other's arm, and walk slowly across the street from our parked car. Even with us holding each other, we still almost slipped.
The restaurant appears to be quite large, taking up two shop spaces, but there were only about a dozen tables. The back room area is a large living room, with a couple of couches and coffee tables. This place used to be a coffee house, where coffee drinkers can sit at the living room and read while drinking coffee and eating desserts.
The menu is not extensive, only one page, but it does have 8 appetizers. We ordered a plate of Shrimp Mozambique for appetizer. I asked for a basket of rolls, so to mop up the spicy garlic butter. The shrimps are the small, peel-and-eat type. In most Portuguese restaurants, they give you the bigger (not jumbo) shrimps. Anyway, the garlic sauce was quite nice - not too spicy, not too buttery, and certainly garlicky enough. I mopped up most of the sauce with the bread.The restaurant is a bring-you-own-booze BYOB kind of restaurant, so no alcohol for me. Most customers came in with their bottle of wine. The ladies in the next table brought in two bottles. I was tempted to buy one of the bottles from her.
My order of Pork Alentenjana came out while we were still eating the shrimp appetizer. I allowed the waitress to take away the plate with still a lot of garlic sauce in it. The Pork dish is made up of small cubes of marinated pork, on top of cubed, deep fried potatoes, and cooked with some little neck clams. The pork cubes were very tasty. The only complain I have about this dish is that it is not hot. It came out lukewarm, like it has been sitting in the kitchen for a while. I brought most of it home.
Mom ordered Portuguese steak. It comes out with two large fried eggs on top. Mom said no hot peppers, otherwise there would have been some slices of spicy red peppers on top of the steak as well. The potatoes is the round, deep fried potatoes. Mom said it is very good.
On the way to the rest room, I stopped at the living room couch, and took a picture. It seemed quite comfortable here. I may come back some day with my books, and enjoyed a cup of cappuccino.
