Last night was the soft opening of Fernandes Steakouse on RT 79 in Matawan. They took over the former Mediterranean Chateau. It’s from the same people who run the Newark and South Amboy Fernandes outposts. I hear the menu is limited during this period.
I’m very much looking forward to trying when they get into full operation.
This should be a home run I’m not aware of a decent Portuguese place in the immediate vicinity.
I FEEL THE NEED FOR A HODown. Anyone else???
Anyone know when they are opening?
Wowza!!! That’s pretty darn cool and I look forward to checking it out.
Went last night and they are fully operational. Walked in around 6:30 and was able to get seated with no ressie (not sure if they take ressies), but they were completely full within an hour of our arrival. The menu is identical to the Fernandes 3 menu (in fact, it is the Fernandes 3 menu as “Fernandes 3” is stamped on the cover). No rodizio. The food we had was on the whole quite good and certainly on par with Fernandes 3. Had a huge pot of cockles to start with a 1/2 pitcher of sangria. Mains included garlic shrimp and a special whole bronzino. Only disappointment were the Portugese thin sliced potatoes which were not freshly fried and not worth the calories. Seemed to us that they could use some additional waitstaff, but the staff at work did a great job and there were no service hiccups. Will be returning.
Their web presence seems pretty abysmal–the page for Matawan is a “coming soon” page, and the menu on the South Amboy page doesn’t seem to work either. I would love to see if they have something in Mataean at lunchtime that would be good for takeout.
I think our dinner group is going here in a couple of weeks. Any comments or recommendations?
We discovered they have outdoor seating, so we went there for the first time last week for lunch.
We shared a first course, barbecued Portuguese sausage. Not good. Sliced way too thin so that when barbecued, the slices became so overly crisp as to be nearly inedible.
We each got a main course. Even though I was taking a risk, I’m extremely fond of duck, so I chose the duck breast with orange sauce. While the meat was cooked medium as I requested, the serious problem was that the fat cap had not been suffiently rendered which made the skin flabby instead of crisp. (Ironically, the opposite of the sausage problem.) The orange sauce was delicious. (Note: I took some leftover slices home along with some sauce. When I heated up the slices, I rendered the fat to crsipy which made a marked improvement.)
Mr. R. chose the grilled 12-oz. filet mignon with Spanish sauce, shrimp & pineapple. Kind of like surf & turf. It was cooked medium as requested. He was very pleased with it. I tasted the sauce. Delicious. Came with roasted potatoes and mixed vegetables.
Desserts were great. A sundae for him and crème caramel for me.
Despite those problems, we decided to go again yesterday for lunch. A much better experience. We started with an excellent shrimp cocktail (strangely listed on the menu as "boiled shrimp”). The cocktail sauce was especially tasty. This time, we shared a steak, the 16-oz. barbecued ribeye. We requested medium. It came closer to medium rare but was still fine. Came with choice of two sides. We chose yellow rice and mixed vegetables. Mr. R. had the sundae again while I had crème brulée.
Service was friendly and attentive.
We’ve now put Fernandes on our outdoor dining rotation.
There are photo sets on my Flickr, but for some mysterious reason, the connection from HO is not working.
I went for dinner yesterday in a group of seven. First observation: when the place is full, it is too noisy to have a conversation with anyone at the table. In fact, when the waitstaff was singing “Happy Birthday” to someone (which happened at least three times), I couldn’t even give my order to the waiter!
I got the Txitorra (which I think is what you got)–sliced sausage and shrimp in a spicy sauce. The sauce was tasty, but too oily/greasy for my taste. For my main course I got an 8-ounce salmon filet with Dijon mustard sauce, whipped potatoes, and garlic spinach. The sauce was kind of plopped on in one spot on the filet, rather than spread out. This seemed like the only dish that didn’t have lobster (which I don’t eat), and was a manageable size. Other people ordered short ribs, or rib eye, or other dishes, and all the portions were way too large. (They thought so; many took half of their meal home.) I don’t remember seeing duck on the menu at all.
So … too noisy, and seriously over-sized portions . The latter may appeal to some, but the group I was with were older, with smaller appetites, and concerned about not overeating. Bottom line: not scheduled for a repeat (even though it is only a mile from my house!).
Maybe there was “pato” on the menu instead of duck?
Between trying to read the giant menu plus two inserts in a cramped space, and trying to decipher the too-ornate font, I could easily have missed it.
