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| - On Wednesday nights, Bairrada offers a "pig roast" which works like a magnet on fans of old-fashioned, simple, rustic approach to meat. If that's what attracts you to the restaurant, you need to know the following: There is indeed a large pig roasted on an outdoor spit, which sits to the side of the restaurant's beautiful garden patio. But the pig is not on the menu and you cannot order it as a course. The restaurant offers complimentary small portions of the pig to all guests as an appetizer. It is delicious, but if roasted pork is what you came here for, you won't be satisfied. There's suckling pig on the menu, but as our very helpful waitress explained, the restaurant gets one piglet each day and sells out of it at lunchtime.
The restaurant offers a selection of meat and seafood, including the iconic Portuguese bacalao (grilled salt cod), grilled sardines, and meats of all kinds. The cuisine is not fancy, but portions are generous, flavours robust and prices not extravagant. Creme caramel and passion pudding were both wonderful desserts.
What stood out for me was without doubt, the restaurant's wine list. It isn't long, but I saw more than a dozen Portuguese wines I've never heard of (unavailable at LCBO, I suspect), all priced very reasonably. $35 got us a bottle of truly delicious, meaty, robust red from Alentejo. So skip the mediocre sangria and choose a bottle of wine instead, or ask your server for a recommendation. You won't regret.
Portuguese food wouldn't be my first choice when going to a restaurant, and my visit to Bairrada hasn't changed that. However, I am already looking forward to going back there, if only to sit with friends at those long harvest tables on possibly the best patio in Toronto, snacking on wonderful soft fresh cheese, roasted red peppers and perfectly grilled calamari, and drinking my way through the restaurant's wine list.
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