Wine Club Restaurante

We were looking to eat out on a Sunday night, and seemingly everything that was near the top of our list was closed. We settled on the idea of finding a place to grab some wine, and some snacks to go with it.

Wine Club Restaurant seemed nice from the reviews on Google Maps, but we didn't go in with high expectations. Restaurants like this in and around the old town in Porto are hit-and-miss. Sometimes you stumble upon a real gem, but just as often the quality is average at best.

We were so happy to be pleasantly surprised here. We walked in a little earlier around 19:15 and it was practically empty. After we ordered a few starters, and the person who took care of us (we believe the owner) recommended us a red wine on the lighter side to go with them. It was a good choice. Reasonably priced, cute bottle, and intentionally or not, it was served in a carafe that matched the color of the bottle. The wine list itself looked very good too, a lot of variety between types of wines and budgets, with a focus on Douro wines.

We thought the food was excellent. The octopus salad was quite different from most others we had before, full of pickled vegetables like cauliflower and carrots. The marinated tuna was my favorite of the evening. Very thin slice of lean tune, marinated in an amazing sauce. Between the two, we were happy that we ordered some bread too, there was plenty of sauce left to dip into.

My wife's favorite was the smoked salmon salad, despite the fact that she usually doesn't go for smoky flavors. The quality of the salmon was top-notch, and the dressing was very well-balanced in terms of sweetness and acidity. A pleasing hint of mustard in there too. Finally, we also had the ham croquettes, which were nice and crispy on the outside and perfectly gooey on the inside.

We finished the mean by sharing a panna cotta. In line with the rest of the evening, it was very good. We left thinking that we would definitely come back here to try some other stuff as well.