Out for Tapas; In for Soup
Last night was a birthday celebration night (not mine - I don't age), so we went out to Oporto Fooding House. We got hooked on cuisine from Portugal and Portuguese colonies years ago at a tiny grubby place in an obscure strip center in suburban Houston called Taste of Portugal. It was a 1-man show run by this eccentric dude from South Africa named George and featured some awesome Portuguese, Angolan, and Brazilian dishes. I'm not sure that George's business acumen matched his vision and cooking talent, so Taste of Portugal is long gone...but it was fun while it lasted.
Anyway, last night was for Portuguese and Brazilian drinks (cachaca flights, caipirinhas, vinho verde, and some rich Boal Madeira) and small plates. We started with chorizo potato bread and the smoked cod and & whipped potato croquettes that I mentioned last week, worked through an assortment of stuffed dates, spicy charcuterie, clams, scallops, lamb ribs, Brussels sprouts, and finally sealed the deal with banana pudding, some Portuguese-style tiramisu that has to be one of the lightest and best versions of that dish I have ever had! Plan to try this place if you have not yet. It's a classy joint, but they don’t take reservations, so waits are common. The cocktails are good, though, and they do have call-ahead seating so you can get on the waiting list if you need to. A good option if you’re only 1-2 people is to sit at the prep bar in the back corner – we’ve done that a couple of times and loved watching the staff work. By the way, the proprietors of Oporto Fooding House, which is on Gray in Midtown, also run the Queen Vic (a pub featuring some good Indian food) and a Wine Café also called Oporto that I haven’t yet tried (if you have, leave me a comment on how you like it), both over on Richmond Avenue.
Of course, after we got home last night it immediately dropped 40 degrees and is now sleeting (!!!) in Houston (shutting down the entire city of 6 million people), so some leftover-driven chicken corn chowder with rice seemed like a good idea tonight. It was pretty normal (plenty of recipes along those lines floating around the web), except that I lightened it up by leaving out the actual cream and went a little German by starting with some dark pumpernickel bread toasted for croutons and working backward to decide to sauté all the veggies in plenty of mustard powder for some tang. Something a little different to try…