6/10
Telephone 020-7351 0101
Address 312-314 King's Road, London SW3
Open All week, noon-11pm
Price Around £30-£35 a head, including drinks.
Wheelchair access and disabled WC
Taking inspiration from the spirit of magnanimity that helped elevate the Ashes series above all others, I dedicate this review to Australian readers here and at home. More than merely dedicate it, indeed, I hope it does its bit to raise morale by reminding you of happier times.
Long before Australian cricket ambitions turned to what his great uncle Evelyn might have termed a handful of dust, Steve Waugh captained the country to three Ashes, not to mention a record 16 successive Test wins. How Waugh came by his nickname "Tugga" I've no idea, but perhaps the Waughs of Sydney have the odd corpuscle of Iberian blood, tugga being Portuguese slang for bloke or geezer.
It is also the name of a slightly bizarre, new-ish restaurant/bar, cunningly positioned a hideously sliced penalty kick from Stamford Bridge to pick up custom from another titan of sport and his local admirers. Had it been around in the earlier Chelsea of Ron Harris and Micky Droy, this is just the kind of place the neo-Nazi element among Chelsea's eclectic fan base would have enjoyed demolishing by way of limbering up for a ruck with away supporters. The psychedelic floral wallpaper and ultra-garish colour scheme would have irritated the boot boys something chronic.
In this era of multibillionaire sequestrators of the former USSR's oil and aluminium resources, and super-cool pretty-boy coaches, however, one can easily imagine fans nipping in to deconstruct Jose Mourinho's team selection over a glass of vintage port and some pesticos (the Portuguese equivalent of tapas), and to debate whether the bold use of lurid mauves, pinks and lime greens combines nicely with the brickwork walls and Lubyanka-chic low-hanging bare lightbulbs; or whether the ensemble suggests the kind of acid trip that traditionally concludes with an 18-month stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Whether the food is authentic, Jose would know better than those of us who haven't been to Portugal for 25 years, but you have to be suspicious. When a restaurant uses the word "contemporary" about its cuisine, it's generally shorthand for "If we tried to serve this stuff back at home, they'd scratch their heads and head straight to McDonald's". Main courses such as confit of duck with parmentier potatoes infused with black truffles sound as convincingly Portuguese as Steve Coogan's pastiche crooner Tony Ferrino.
Having said that, the pesticos do have the vague ring of truth, and we liked most of the rustic little dishes we tried. Pickled Bizaro pig's ear (£3.50) tended towards the globulous for anyone less than besotted with cartilage, and it had half the flavour of some tasteless chunks of octopus in olive oil and paprika (£5.50). But a cold salad of cod and chickpea (£4.50) was zesty and lemony, pan-fried prawns (four big juicy ones for £5.50) came in a good peri peri sauce, and the inherent blandness of quail was cleverly offset by a sour marinade of carrot and onion (£5.50). A miniature chicken pie (£3) shaped after Mr Kipling's hat was excellent.
We were admiring the view (a Tesco Express on the other side of a road heavily populated with 4x4s en route to Peter Jones) and laying into a fruitily delicious white called Quinto da Cavala (£6 a glass), recommended by the friendly waitress, when our main courses arrived. Oven-baked sea bream (£13.50) came in a sloppy tomato and onion marinade that seemed traditionally à la Portuguese in a 1970s cookbook kind of way, and could have done with being reduced for another half an hour to strengthen the flavour. And although what the menu knows as slow-roasted fillet of black pork (£17.50) was so fatty it might have been belly, and lacked the sweetness of the most lovingly reared swine, it was cooked to crispy perfection and worked well with the clam-based sauce. The pudding we shared, a slice of almond tart with raspberry sorbet, came with a blackcurrant so grotesquely huge that my friend took it to be genetically modified and refused to touch it lest she one day give birth to a two-headed child.
Engaging curiosity though it is, Tugga has some way to go before it can emulate the Portugeezer up the road with the head big enough for two and dub itself "the Special One".
