BrazilPortu is tucked away further down the Bearwood Road away from the main high street area. It’s part of a row of independent shops and businesses, plus this part of Bearwood is on the up with lots of specialist shops and eateries opening up in recent years. BrazilPortu is a bit deceptive from the outside as its their shop that fronts the street and you need to walk through this to get to the restaurant section. The shop is an intriguing looking place and it stocks lots of speciality products, so it’s well worth a visit if you want to recreate Brazilian food at home.
Some of my most memorable dining experiences have been in South American restaurants, I think in part because beef has always been my favourite meat and steak in particular. So I was keen to try out BrazilPortu. The restaurant is colourfully furnished and decorated, but it’s not too busy either, so it’s a relaxing place to spend time. The waiter was friendly, knowledgeable and attentive.
Our waiter suggested we have the Special Grill for One, but scaled up for two people. This meant we could pick out a couple of steaks and have them with a range of sides. We decided this would give us the chance to try a range of dishes from the menu.
We chose the Picanha Na Chapa (a rump steak) and the Contra Filé Na Chapa (a sirlion). You pick whether you want your steak well done, medium or rare and we both went for medium. I preferred the rump to the sirlion, but that’s a personal preference as I find it tastier. As you can see from the pictures, the steak came served on sizzling cast iron platters and with a bed of fried onions. The steaks were cooked as requested and were great quality pieces of meat – very enjoyable. The portions are generous and most meat eaters will be very happy with the serving size. We didn’t get any steak knives to eat with and when we asked for them we were told they had none, but they were looking to get some soon. Steak knives would have made eating easier, but that’s not to suggest that the steaks were poor quality, because they were very tender.
Between us we were able to have chips(twice because you can never have enough chips), salad, rice, black beans and tropeiro. The tropeiro is a mixture of spring greens, mixed beans, egg and smoked sausage. The chips were nicely crisp and the salad and rice were fairly standard. The tropeiro was an interesting, tasty dish and I’d certainly order it again. I wasn’t so keen on the black beans and I’d probably try a different side on a return visit.
We’ll certainly be going back. It was a lovely welcoming restaurant with a good range of dishes on the menu apart from the more obvious steaks. I’d be interested in trying out the salted cod or the peri-peri chicken another time.
Other local eateries to try include Hengata in Harborne, A La Mexicana in Bearwood, De La Vie’s and The Old Dresser also in Bearwood.
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