Don Tonho

Description:

• This consistently ranks as one of the most spectacular and relentlessly hip restaurants in Porto, with superb food and a physical layout that is a triumph of historical renovation. Opened in 1992 by a group of investors who included Portugal's most famous pop singer, Rui Velosa, it sits on the eastern edge of the town's medieval port, welcoming clients who have included former French president Jacques Chirac, Italian superstar Marcello Mastroianni, and Fidel Castro. You'll wait for your table in a street-level bar, amid an intriguing collection of 18th-century stonework and latter-day poured concrete. The sprawling upstairs dining room contains a medley of different architectural styles, as well as once-concealed stairways and granite facades of elaborate 17th-century houses that were buried during excavations for a nearby traffic tunnel during the 18th century. They were unearthed during the renovations that led up to the opening of this restaurant.

  Menu items are savory and superb. Stellar examples include a soup of fresh green beans with herbs and tomatoes, at least four (and sometimes more) preparations of codfish, roasted kid in red-wine sauce, a wide selection of shellfish, and modernized versions of the kind of earthy rural food that many Portuguese remember fondly from their childhoods. The wine list is so comprehensive that some American gastronomy magazines have added it to their reference collection for research on the Portuguese wine industry.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Very Highly Recommended 2010