James' review of Portal Restaurant & Bar

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.