Portal Restaurant & Bar

The prices would be OK if the food matched up. One of our party ordered the turbot and at £25 received a tiny portion, a joke really. Other items unavailable ( at only 7.30pm), or just not that exceptional. slow service.

The worst restaurant I did in London…
It is not worth at all, we went there for valentine's day. Atmosphere and venue are quite nice but the food is very poor and the quantity is less than tiny. I really do not recommend this venue it is not worth spending your money there.

Portal is one of those venues I've heard about but never had the chance to visit – being quite territorial it's not too often I get a chance to eat in the city however I'm glad I did with Portal. The main dining room is set in a beautiful conservatory giving plenty of natural light and is very relaxing. The menu is excellent and covers a great range of dishes – Including vegetarian and vegan and gluten free so something for everyone really. Starter of veal carpaccio with truffle oil, goat cheese ice cream sprinkled with purple shiso leaves was awesome and the following main of Confit suckling pig with sauté curly kale and ham, green apple mash and pepper sauce tender and very very tasty, always one to try a cheese board instead of the sweet option I was not disappointed with the selection and tastes. Service was smooth and slick and the vibe very relaxed – without table turns it's very easy to go here early evening and spend all night relaxing and enjoying fine food – how a dinner should be. Definitely one of my recent highlights.

Antonio and his team hosted my 40th birthday this year, when I took over the whole restaurants. They were excellent in the planning process, and all really worked hard to make the whole thing memorable. The evening was all canapes, and I received nothing but compliments from my guests as to the cooking and the service (especially the salt cod). The restaurant came up with two special vodka-based cocktails for the guests, and were very good with the choice of other drinks. I never once felt that I was being pushed into an unnecessarily high option that mighht not have been needed. All in all, I would not hesitate to recommend it for events. I also take guests there for a proper dinner regularly, and have never been disappointed.

There are some restaurants where the menu reads well but its promise is not fulfilled by what is delivered. Portal is one of these. You get the feeling that they probably once had a chef who knew how to cook the food to a good standard but it's his night off or he's left and a journeyman is trying to recreate something without actually having the ability.

I had a pigeon starter where the taste of the pigeon was drowned by the violence of the fruit chutney served with it. Maybe I should have known better. We then both had fish main courses: skate (boned as it turned out) with a bean stew and stone bass with some sort of sauce. Neither was very distinguished and the fish seemed tired rather than fresh off the boat.

(We did have a nice bottle of Portuguese wine which complied with the description we'd expressed to the waiter.)
For all this – 1 starter, 2 fish dishes and a bottle of wine (no dessert, no coffee etc) we paid £93 service included. That's a lot of money for an indifferent meal.