Food Review: Portuguese Club of Vancouver

Clams cooked with slices of chorizo Portuguese style

My friend here who recently traveled to Portugal wanted to recreate the dining experience and found ONE Portuguese restaurant in Vancouver so we checked it out.

It's called Portuguese Club of Vancouver on Commercial Drive and we went there today for lunch.

Inside the decor is rundown, but none of the customers seems to mind -- their attention is totally focused on the giant screens showing the football match. People were glued to the football while drinking beers, wine and eating lunch.

Large buns like those at Fernando's

The staff shortage is acutely felt as we stood there for several minutes before being shown to a table, and then to take our order, but the young waitresses are nice enough.

The menu looked pretty limited with only a few starters and mains. It was mostly seafood, two soups -- no caldo verde! and some sandwiches.

My friend is a picky eater and didn't seem interested in sharing several dishes, so we ended up ordering the same main dish -- sardines with potato and salad (CAD$20), and a plate of clams with chorizo (CAD$24) to share as a starter.

We tried to order the deep-fried cod cakes called bacalhau, but they were sold out! So our waitress suggested clams with chorizo.

As we waited, she gave us giant buns, reminiscent of Fernando's in Macau, but not as good -- they were served cold and had a hard exterior, though they were soft and fluffy inside. 

They were perfect to mop up the delicious savoury sauce in the clams and chorizo, though it was very salty. The clams were plump and a touch briny, cooked in a white wine sauce with the slices of chorizo and some parsley. 

Then our mains arrived and the portion was quite large! Four medium-sized whole sardines cooked on a grill, with a salad made of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber doused with Italian dressing, and three chunks of boiled potatoes.

Hearty serving of sardines with potatoes, salad

At first I wondered if I could finish all of this, but plugged along, methodically one side of the sardine, removing the bone in the middle, and then finishing the other side before moving onto the next one. Eating at a steady pace I managed to polish off all the sardines! 

The potatoes were delicious when dipped in the clam and chorizo sauce that we kept at the table. 

We were too full for anything else. My friend had wanted to try the rice pudding for dessert, but she packed up two sardines, salad and the rest of her bun to take home.

The selection of food was hardly impressive, but perhaps you need to be a regular to dine there to have off-menu items prepared. We heard from one waitress that it can be so packed in the restaurant for other football matches. Luckily the patrons left table by table once the footie match was over, though by that point we were almost finished our lunch.

Portuguese Club of Vancouver

1144 Commercial Drive

604 251 2042