Roast Dinners Around The World

Ola, World Emperor Gravy is back with more worldwide adventure, this time with a roast dinner at The Irish Rover in Portimão, Portugal.

Some places I go to, there simply are no roast dinners. Palermo was a case in point – quite obviously the mafia were never going to allow anyone to serve such a delicacy there, as then their Italian food would have some real competition.

I didn’t look for a roast dinner when I was in Prague, but they did surprisingly banging gravy with some of their meals.

And when I was in Springfield, all I could find on offer was BBQ cats and dogs.

But there was never going to be any shortage of places for a roast dinner on the Algarve. Namely, Portimão which is where our apartment was based, and it being our first day we didn’t really want to get on a once every two hours train to another resort (ok…Uber exists too), so we tried to find a half-decent roast dinner in Portimão.

Our first option was Taffy’s Bar & Grill (yes the people who run it still seem to have Welsh accents).

But after seeing the scary new potatoes on Google Reviews it was quickly vetoed.

A portal into the culinary world of roast dinners abroad

And then there was the Croke Park Bar, which advertises “free sex” after 4am, though one of the reviews was quite affirmative “Awful food ,overpriced DO NOT HAVE THE SUNDAY ROAST”.

Even scarier, there was a bar called Ireland’s Eye, which on Google has a photo of a police van as it’s main image, and the various reviews accuse the bar of harbouring Putinists, allowing violence towards women, homophobic rants, pro-IRA songs – sounds like a lovely place, and then there was the image of a rat in the kitchen. And they still get plenty of 5 star reviews.

I think they do roast dinners, but I’ll leave you to check on that.

So onto the subject of this post, The Irish Rover. I invited my friend who lives in Portimão (who you would expect to know where to go for a roast dinner…right?), that the best I could find in the town was The Irish Rover.

“Had breakfast there once. Never again”.

Yet the allure of lunch with World Emperor Gravy was surprisingly too much.

Enter The Irish Rover

Roy Of The Rovers

If you are willing to go somewhere like The Irish Rover on the Algarve then you probably don’t care too much how tasteful the décor is, but the vibe inside was part 1990’s Mediterranean restaurant, part newly built Irish pub trying to look old, also with some outdoor seating on a terrace.

Likewise you may not care too much about the choice of beer, as our waitress started reading out the list, my heart just sank, “Coors, Carlsberg, Super Bock…Brewdog”.

Rarely am I so relieved to hear the word, “Brewdog”.

The menu doesn’t exactly give much information, but they only had beef on offer, and it was priced at €15.00, if I recall correctly. Maybe they have different meats some weeks, maybe they don’t.

Shall we crack on? It took around 15 minutes to arrive, and looked exactly as I expected.

Dear most roast dinners in London, you are forgiven. Well, at least from looks…who knows, the bland looking dinner could be a hidden gem?

Starting with the carrots, which were soft, wet and tasted mostly of gravy.

Then we had a spoonful or two of green beans, which were soft, wet and tasted mostly of gravy.

And the cauliflower? Yep, soft, wet and tasted mostly of gravy.

The Doncaster Rovers Of Roast Dinner Reviewers

It being an Irish pub, mash takes precedent to roast potatoes – and at least there were no new potatoes that have ended up on the wrong meal.

The mash was a more coarse than ideal, and also a tad on the dry side – no creamy luxury here. And suspiciously hot. But it was acceptable…I guess, so were the soft, wet vegetables.

Also the large roast potato was acceptable, soft enough inside to be edible – and if you’ve followed my Roast Dinners In London journey, you’ll know “edible” isn’t a given.

The Yorkshire pudding was from a packet – absolutely no chance this was homemade. It had that tearable texture, and was just something I was eating that probably qualified as food.

Just in case you need a reminder of whether the beef was overdone or not.

Yep. The beef was overdone. Tough and coarse, I’d guess a cut like topside, which is my least favourite.

Finally, the gravy. Fuck me, I liked something on the plate. Decent, thick and tasty – it did taste quite beefy, though I wouldn’t rule out some granule action.

The Irish Rover, Portimão

Hmmm. This wasn’t quite the roast dinner of dreams, and I think it is arguably the worst roast dinner I’ve had outside of London.

Boiled, wet vegetables, a Yorkshire pudding from a packet, the mash – which you’d expect an Irish pub to specialise in, was coarse and somewhat dry, and the beef was overcooked too much.

Gosh, say something nice, Lord Emperor World King Viscount Gravy, you are were on flipping holiday.

Well I liked the gravy. Plus the service was friendly and welcoming, the lady serving us offered to play musical chairs and was genuinely funny.

And I managed to escape the (not very) Super Bock dictatorship which seems to insist that pubs with 5 beer taps should have a minimum of 4 pumping out (absolutely fucking not) Super Bock lager.

Oh and the two accomplices who wisely avoided the misery of an Algarve roast dinner, scored the batter on their fish and chips at 10/10. If complimenting your batter isn’t me being nice, then I don’t know what is.

Just Give Us A Score And Fuck Off Back To England

My roast dinner eating accomplice was pretty appalled, and scored it a 4.00 out of 10.

I’m only marginally more generous at a 4.20 out of 10. Maybe don’t have a roast dinner if you come to Portimão.

So all that is now left to do is impart you with my knowledge of my least favourite Portuguese politicians.

Hmmm.

Ohhhhh it was a joke, was it? Oh ha ha ha ha. I must have a humour deficiency when it comes to inciting murder of politicians.

Yeah, I know what you are thinking. But Nando’s isn’t Portuguese either.

Ciao.

Wait…you want to hear about where else I ate in Portimão? Well, that’s very kind of you, though I confirm that I didn’t eat in any other Irish or English bars…at least of this style.

Eating In Portimão

Believe it or not, this wasn’t enough to put me off eating in Portimão. Hell, I even went back to The Irish Rover for a pint of Punk IPA, when I was fed up of the Super Bock dictatorship…though I did have to clarify that it was Punk IPA and not Carlsberg upon tasting.

Generally the rule was to order fish to be impressed, except when they put balsamic glaze on a fine tuna steak at an Italian restaurant called Pinocchio.

Not the only time where the cuisine, or Portimão itself reminded me of Britain in the 1990’s.

Actually, the Eggs Royale I had from CaffédaRocha was pretty ordinary – their toasted sandwiches looked banging, but I was trying to be healthy at lunch.

Churrasqueira da Praça Grill e Takeway looked like the most basic restaurant from the outside, but actually served a banging golden bream.

Yep, the potatoes look basic, but yet they were so fresh and juicy for new potatoes.

Meaty Mouth In Portimão

The fog rolled in one day, which amused me to see all the glum faces walking back from the beach at 11am. A ha ha ha ha no sunbathing for you today a ha ha…oh wait I was on holiday too.

That day we had lunch at Coffeine&brunch – a more modern brunch style place, at least from the menu, and one that was impossible to choose from.

My choice of Chicken Caesar salad wasn’t amazing in terms of flavour but was fresh nonetheless.

Nor did I fall in love with the steak at Urban Grill that night – whilst I may have been mesmerised by the one solitary waiter managing to look after the 20 tables in the restaurant, the steak was just good, nothing more. And oh for a peppercorn sauce, or something. Maybe I could have been the first person ever in Portugal to ask for ketchup with their steak…alas…I wasn’t brave enough.

Chocolate cake for dessert was actively crap too.

My 3 Recommendations For Portimão

It may seem like I was pleased but unimpressed with eating in Portimão, which is broadly the case – a bit like the fog rolling in, it did amuse me to see grumpy people walking back from the beach…but also I wanted sunshine so it didn’t really impress me either.

Thankfully, there are a few places, other than the aforementioned Churrasqueira da Praça Grill e Takeway – but you probably aren’t going to go there because it looks so basic (you still should do).

The first place we didn’t actually eat at, but the brunches did look good, Green Heart @ Cloque.

We went multiple times, mostly because of the location, a short walk from the centre of Portimão, along the coast, and it is a great spot for watching the sunset, but also for daytime drinks in the sunshine too, overlooking the coastal strip. It was my happy place.

Oh and they sell something other than Super Bock – Leffe, in this case. Yep we’ve progressed from the 1990’s to the 2000’s.

Next up was Restaurante O Viriato, a Portuguese place slightly on the edge of town – alas we went for a bite to eat on Sunday roast day, when we really should have saved this for another night.

There was so much on that menu we could have ordered, instead we ordered a selection of starters – the cod fishcakes were particularly superb.

Finally, but absolutely not the least was one of the best restaurant experiences of the year – The Boys – Good Food, Good Place, Good Times.

Run by two husbands, one does the orders and entertaining, the other does the cooking…and entertaining. It is more like having two friends cooking for you than an actual restaurant.

There’s only a few tables, they get to know you by name, where you are from, you hear their story, at some point they’ll take an order – but there is no rush at all.

The menu is limited – two types of burger, a salad and whatever their main course is. The Wagyu burger was super, the fries pleasantly crispy too.

And then the chef gets on his guitar and sings in Brazilian/Spanish/English, depending on the song.

An supremely heart-warming experience. Nobody has given them anything other than a 5 star review on Google of TripAdvisor – and the first person to do so will be an utterly miserable person.

From Portimão To Carvoeiro

I realise this blog is getting as long as one of my coastal walks right now, and gosh the coastal walk from Portimao to Carvoeiro was long.

I had some rewards there though.

At Kulinarium, I had some really fresh hake – cannot say I was expecting it battered, but I appreciated it. The potato and cucumber salad was delicious too.

And for dessert?

Why not some popcorn chicken with aioli, which I loved – and a Porn Star Martini to go with it. Don’t tell me I’m not classy.

This was over the road at Levels – and they had a pretty cool DJ on that afternoon too.

Carvoeiro (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) was a cute cove with a small town built around it, with plenty of good restaurants, and a small sandy beach. From the sea, it looks like this:

One final meal there, and it was our final night.

Alas, Black Salt disappointed. It looked pretty, the service was great but the portion small, price high and quality just ordinary – dry chicken again. Should have stuck to eating popcorn chicken at Levels (or ordered fish…a lesson I should have taken on board by this point).

Alvor & Silves

One of the best meals we had was at a vegetarian restaurant (yeah…scary), called Parsley & Thyme in a town inland called Silves.

Banging guacamole (use the full word, people), and I think the only time I tasted any form of spice all holiday. Granted there were Indian restaurants we could have gone to…but didn’t.

I hadn’t seen or heard of those style of mushrooms before – quite long and chunky, like shiitake in texture but different to taste. This was a damn good meal.

The same night, we demoted the parsley went to a restaurant called Thyme, in Alvor – the sister restaurant to the booked-all-month, Ruccula.

This was sooooo British – you know those kind of restaurants, normally on the edge of large towns/cities trying to lure those with a bit more money out with the promise of quality food and a bit of country luxury?

It was that vibe, excellent service again, almost everyone was British, probably all but us on golfing holidays – that vibe, that crowd. Alas, the tomato soup over-powered my whole main. I didn’t actually enjoy it. Imagine getting superb roasties with a horrid jus…that vibe.

The chocolate tarte made up for it somewhat, it reminded me of a Sara Lee chocolate gateaux, but with some white chocolate sauce, and a crunchy base.

A worthy mention goes to Atascado, for some really good sea bass.

Finally…yeah I’m bored too…we managed to find some good beer, at Beer & Co.

The Taproom is also worth a mention, though cash only, however Beer & Co had a fair variety of beers, and great people watching opportunities on the Alvor strip, plus the young woman working the cocktail bar opposite looked a bit like Ariana Grande.

Alas, it did get pretty dangerous one night with a group of 60 year old women came in and started dancing…and the DJ started shouting “shout out if you are from Britain”…yeah. The 1990’s were back…but with a fucking good NEIPA.

So Portimao and the area is rather British, but I also thought it was quite charming – and had more of a chilled vibe than Spain.

Shit roast dinners – The Irish Rover being worst I’ve had outside London. If you know better, please get in touch!

Ciao, obrigado.