Paixanito

So many things I read and watched were my faithful companions during my formative years; one was Jose Quiterio's gastronomy column in Portugal's most famous weekly newspaper Expresso. With a very particular style he would bring together poetry, tourism, cinema and culinary musings and often one would end the article with the well fed feeling of 'Wow, that was a good meal'. Specifically I remember his line 'Manducantes do meu país, todos ao Paixanito' which is something along the lines of 'Anyone from my country who eats should go to Paixanito'. That's why I was so excited when, in our trip to the Algarve, we got to go there for dinner.

A little outside Loulé you find Paixanito in a secondary, barely lit road, behind an unassuming door. The place is small, as small can be, with only 5 tables, elegantly decorated with old wine, pasta and chocolate signs, and indirect yellowish light. Although they have one meat and one fish dish, this is a tapas restaurant and that's what you should select. They recommend two to three tapas dishes per person but I would recommend two, rather than three (we ordered 8 for the three of us and could have done with, at least, two less); here's our order:
- Fried shrimp
- Roastbeef
- Pork sausage with apple
- Garbanzo beans and codfish salad
- Codfish fried cakes
- Roasted goat cheese with honey
- Green and red pepper bell salad with garlic and olive oil
- Stuffed mushrooms with bacon

The food was well cooked but one notch down what it should be in terms of taste, probably catered to international tastebuds, which makes sense considering I was the only portuguese in the room, aside from the staff . However, the really big blunder came with the wine, when we selected a wine of which they only had one bottle and still went ahead and served us. When we asked for a second one, it took them 10 minutes to come and tell us they didn't have it and another 15 minutes to decant our second choice and put it to breathe. We got it when our meal was practically over. We were not impressed!
We ended up paying 50€ a person, which is clearly above market price for the type of meal (not to mention service!) we got.
Most definetely catered to both foreign taste and wallet.