5/F, QRE Plaza, 202 Queen's
Road East, Wan Chai
Tel: 2520 0045 and 2866 1868
Open: noon-3pm, 5pm-11.30pm (last order at 10.45pm)
Cuisine: Portuguese
Price: about HK$275 without drinks and the service charge.
Ambience: you'd be forgiven for feeling as confused as we were - we booked a table for Alberto's but the sign downstairs listed the fifth floor as being occupied by Nino's. When we arrived at the restaurant, we were given two menus, one for Alberto's, the other for Nino's. The Alberto's menu has petiscos (Portuguese tapas) and Nino's has main courses, but there's some overlap. Several dishes are listed on both menus, and the food seems to come out of the same kitchen.
Pros: the selection of Portuguese dishes sounded mouth-watering.
Cons: the two menus combined made for too much choice, and they could do without the 'international' dishes such as spaghetti Bolognese and samosas. Grilled meatballs with chourico (chorizo) in home-made cherry tomato sauce (HK$66) didn't seem like the best representative of Portuguese food - the meatballs were too firm and the sauce seemed dull.
Recommended dishes: the other dishes were enjoyable. The fried salt cod with matchstick fries (HK$78) was a great appetiser - crunchy, oily (just a little too oily) and salty, it was the perfect food to have with a drink. Grilled sardines (HK$56 for two) were fat and meaty, although the skin could have used a touch more char. We especially liked our main courses. Spiced grilled chicken marinated in 11 herbs and spices (HK$168) had moist chicken in a tongue-tingling marinade. Even spicier was the piri piri prawns (HK$388) - the prawns had been split down the back, which let the spices penetrate the flesh.