Mito (Porto - Portugal)

[honkman]

Our summaries of the restaurant visits might start to sound boring as we always seem to be very happy with all the dinners but so far the consistent high quality across all restaurants is quite impressive. Last night at Mito in Porto https://mitorestaurante.pt/ was no different and hits kind of a sweet spot of restaurants we also back in the US prefer and which one might describe as Contemporary/New Portuguese.

Couvert - sourdough bread, flavored butter, vegetable paste

Beef croquets, chorizo mayo

“Bola de Berlim”, pata negra ham, bacon doughnut

Carrot in misosuke, apricot chutney, vegetable jus

Wild mushrooms, celery, toasted onion cream, lamb’s lettuce

Roasted pumpkin ravioli, cottage cheese, hazelnuts, lime

Black pork chop, 20 days dry aged (230 g), french fries, grilled vegetable salad

Chocolate mousse, coffee & tonka bean ice cream, honey, fleur de sel, olive oil

Chestnut french toast, apple confit, madeira wine, buttery sheep’s cheese

[plragde (Prabhakar Ragde)]

For those following along at home, a bola de berlim is like a Berliner, the jelly-filled doughnut that JFK once claimed to be, but in Portugal it is sliced and filled with an eggy custard (it wouldn’t be Portugal without the eggs). So the dish at this restaurant resembles it in looks but is quite different in taste, a visual pun. “Black pork” is pata negra, the Iberian acorn-fed pig, porco preto in Portuguese. I can get porco preto cuts in my local urban supermarket in Lisbon, which I tend to prefer, as it is less lean and more marbled than modern pork. But there is a lot of production of it. Some fraction of pork and ham/prosciutto sold in Spain comes from Portugal. The border is kind of meaningless in this respect, and not all the black pork sold in either country is fully acorn-fed; sometimes it is just the breed, or they let them roam the nearby forest a bit, but there are fences to keep them from getting too far away. It generally tastes good, though, and this looks like a nice preparation.