Neto’s flavor route

By Flavia Tomaello, https://flaviatomaello.blog/, Instagram @flavia.tomaello

In the center of Porto, inside an old mansion that today houses Torel 1884 Suites & Apartments, there is an open kitchen that hides nothing of what happens in it. From the dining room tables you can follow, step by step, the work of chef Miguel Neto, head of Bartolomeu Bistro & Wine, a restaurant that turned an apparently simple idea, that of cooking with few but precisely chosen ingredients, into the axis of its entire proposal.

Neto usually summarizes his philosophy with a phrase that works almost like a manifesto, that it is impossible to think about a dish without first considering what its final flavor will be. Behind that statement is a cuisine that privileges the essential, most of its dishes are built with just three or four ingredients, in line with what Anthony Bourdain once defined when he said that good food is, almost always, simple food. But that simplicity requires, paradoxically, meticulous work, visible to anyone who sits at the kitchen counter and watches how each dish is assembled before reaching the table.

This cuisine is also organized following an unusual structure in a bistro, that of the menu itself divided into three moments, Departure, Crossing and Arrival, which reproduce the times of a sea crossing. The reference is not coincidental, the restaurant is named after Bartolomeu Dias, the Portuguese navigator who in the 15th century became the first European to circle the southern tip of Africa and open the sea route to India, and each chapter of the menu functions as a stopover within that imaginary journey, designed to be shared among several diners or to be left in the hands of the chef himself, if preferred, the order and intensity with which each dish follows one another.

Among the high points of that journey is the tuna and white fish tartare, with radish and cilantro on an intensely flavored marinade, as well as the cheese fondue and spicy chorizo ​​with oregano, which well summarizes the vocation of a classic bistro with a Portuguese accent that runs through the entire menu. The steak sandwich with Serra cheese and mustard and the marinated prawns on a barley risotto with citrus and chilli complete a selection in which the sea, as Neto himself explains, always occupies a central place. The desserts close the tour with some classics already established among the house’s regulars, the apple crumble with almond and vanilla, the chocolate mousse with peanuts and fleur de sel, and the key lime pie with meringue and toasted sesame.

A kitchen designed to share

This logic of sharing, more typical of a family table than a conventional restaurant, is perhaps the feature that best defines Neto’s style. Their dishes do not seek to show off individually, but rather to integrate into a broader conversation between diners, something that is reinforced by the design of the room itself, the work of the Nano Design studio, where the African jungle functions as a guiding motif through warm woods, natural textures and plants that coexist with botanical illustrations on the walls, as if the entire dining room had been designed to accompany, also visually, the idea of ​​a shared trip.

Wine occupies an equally central place in this proposal. The menu brings together productions from small Portuguese winegrowers, chosen for their commitment to quality rather than volume, and is completed with a selection of champagnes. But the most unique gesture of the entire restaurant is located below the dining room level, in a cellar installed inside the palace’s old safe, a vestige of its banking past preserved during the restoration of the building. With its vaulted stone ceiling, this space allows, with prior reservation, a private dinner for two people surrounded by bottles that tour the best vineyards in the country, a direct tribute to the exploratory spirit that gives its name to the restaurant.

In the warmer months, the terrace offers a more informal version of the experience, with local delicacies and artisanal ice cream, ideal for those who prefer a relaxed afternoon in the heart of Porto over a full dinner. Whatever the format chosen, Miguel Neto’s proposal always maintains the same internal coherence, that of a kitchen that understands the bistro as a genre and reinterprets it with a Portuguese accent, within a building, Torel 1884 Suites, which seems to have been designed, from its foundations, so that each corner tells a different story without ever losing the common thread that connects them all.

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