Portofino - Douglas

Extremely disappointed. Make a dinner appointment for 31 Jan 2022 online, then walk down the restaurants during this rainy day. And then, it was closed?! I didn’t receive any notification from the booking system. Made a complaint immediately by messaging the restaurant on Facebook, and then they’re saying “The best thing is to call us”? So what is your booking system for? They gave me an explanation, saying that the system didn’t notify my bookings, okay fine then I go to the Facebook page to check. But they don’t even post a feed saying that the restaurant is closed for today, which means I might not be the only one who suffered this disappointment. I’m utterly disappointed by this irresponsible behavior, and will not visit this restaurant again.

We went for dinner last week and chose our food from the Quay West small plates menu. We have never had such delicious food at any other restaurant. The croquettes were stuffed with the most succulant lamb and the nicest I have ever eaten. We would recommend this restaurant with its new menu totally to everyone.

With the main thing I’d heard before visiting that it’s one of the most expensive menus in Douglas, I had high hopes that this would translate into a great meal. Unfortunately not. Gritty, metallic tasting queenies in a fairly bland sauce, followed by fairly tasteless pork belly (a dish I’d usually expect to be fairly unctuous) accompanied with very uninspiring and equally bland sides. Not bad, just boring. Not for me again.

Visited here with clients for a Christmas Lunch. Starter of smoked haddock and black pudding croquettes was very nice but serving them with chili jam (from a jar seemed an odd choice and didn’t really work for me. My main of pork sounded very nice but came out looking like everything else (most people had turkey swimming in gravy but with the apple sauce swimming in top of the gravy. The worst part of the meal was the accompanying potatoes that were clearly shop bought frozen (probably aunt Bessie’s potatoes that were over cooked too. The rest of the veg were also clearly frozen mixed vegetables bought from the supermarket. This was supposed to be a high end restaurant but I left feeling very disappointed and will not be returning.

What a fantastic restaurant! Great service and top class staff. We were made to feel so welcome and the food was some of the best on the island. We had the set Christmas menu and everything was done to perfection. Cannot wait to return. Thank you once again to waiting on staff and chefs for an evening to remember.