Fresh, authentic & delicious taste of Italian food. Staff & owner are welcoming, attentive & accomodating. Fries is not the best but the rest of the food was exquisite (including basil being fresh, fresh tomatoes for the sauce, cream sauce being rich, brick oven baked pizza). Atmosphere is relaxed, clean, & elevated.
I came to Quebec City with my family for our first visit, decided on an Italian meal a week before, & made reservations for 7:00 pm on a Wednesday at Portofino. After being seated & ordering, our appetizers came relatively quickly. However, as other tables left & the restaurant became less busy, we were surprised our main courses were taking so long. A table busser even came by, REMOVED OUR CUTLERY, & placed dessert menus on our table as it looked like we were finished our meal & just waiting. We informed her that our meal had not arrived yet, & she said, "The server asked me to come by & drop these off," & went to replace (most of) our cutlery. Really? The server asked you to remove our cutlery? Our meal finally came, but my wife did not have a fork (that was taken away), & she made eye contact with a blond server, who made eye contact back at her, then turned & walked away. My son felt bad, stood up, & went to another table to get a fork as no one came by for 3-4 minutes to check in on how the meal was. I started eating my lasagna, & the sauce was room temperature, but I didn't think much until I made my second cut into the middle of the lasagna, & it was literally COLD. I asked my wife if I was imagining my food was cold, & she stuck her finger in the middle of my lasagna & was taken aback. Everyone stopped eating & we all tried to get the attention of bussers & servers, & after a few minutes, finally got the attention of a busser (the one who took our cutlery away) to please get our server. After explaining our complaint, our server felt the underside of my plate & said, "I feel it is COLD under the plate, I'm so sorry." He offered another serving, but I was a little turned off at reheated lasagna so I decided to just replace my lasagna with something easy, like the spaghetti with bolognese sauce my son had ordered, & the waiter said, "I will make this my FIRST PRIORITY!" The waiter brought by 2 complimentary pieces of bruschetta so I could eat with my family (see pic 1). However, to our surprise, the amount of time to get what we thought was a relatively easy order took over 10 minutes. When I was finally served, the spaghetti was VERY HOT, & I was focused on eating my meal to try to catch up to the rest of the table. As I was half finished, I looked at my son's plate & asked if he was done. He said, "Yes," but had left some of his sauce. I tried some, as it looked different, & it tasted totally different, YET I ORDERED THE SAME MEAL as him We called the server over yet again, & he came up with this explanation: "Because we rushed the meal, the sauce didn't have time to reduce." Would a restaurant not have a large pot of bolognese sauce ready for the evening? The 2 sauces were obviously different, as mine was watery & not as flavourful as my son's dish (bottom pic 2). The server asked if we would like a complimentary dessert, but we had all had enough of this experience & asked for the bill. We were a little surprised as we looked the items over, & we were not'comped' the lasagna/spaghetti with'different' bolognese sauce. We asked the server & explained that it shouldn't be his fault to receive a 0% tip if the meal was not taken off the bill, to which he said, "You were very polite, did not yell, & were very reasonable & taking the lasagna/spaghetti off would not be a problem. I am not sure why we had to ask for the meal to be taken off the bill. The mere fact that a cold lasagna came out would warrant a comp, but to have a spaghetti with different bolognese sauce come out? The other 3 meals were enjoyed (hence the 2 stars), but I am not sure we will return again.
We went to this restaurant on a Sunday evening after having seen all the good reviews. Unfortunately, we were really disappointed. All the tables were already occupied, so that we had to wait 10 minutes to get a table, which was not a problem. Once seated, we waited about 30 minutes until a waiter came to our table to serve us some tap water. After another couple of minutes a second waiter showed up so we could finally order our drinks & food. We ordered a Hoegaarden beer for 11$ & a cocktail for 16$ (Clover Club), the Bruschetta for 12$ & the Parmesan Fondue for 19$ as starters & the Gnocchi with Spinach for 30$ & the Fettuccine Alfredo for 28$ as our main course. The portions are not quite big even though we took the big portion. The food is good, but not as good as you would expect for this price-value. This restaurant is a moderate italian restaurant but too expensive.
