Adega presents a change of taste in an Asian-dominated downtown

I was so happy when I heard about Adega. Finally! The restaurant promised Portuguese fare, which hasn’t been available here for mass consumption since the 1980s. As a result, our familiarity with the cuisine rests with Portuguese bean soup. A culture cannot possibly be defined by one dish alone.

The restaurant offers a change of pace from all the Asian restaurants in downtown Honolulu, a welcome addition. It occupies the space at Smith and Pauahi streets vacated by Mei Sum when it moved to Nuuanu Avenue. Not a trace of the Chinese restaurant remains. The interior is comfy casual, done in rustic style with dark wood tables and bar.

You can bet it’ll be packed on First Friday, when the main attraction will be a full bar, complete with specialty caipirinhas, one of the Brazilian aspects of the menu, along with wonderful pasteis de bacalhau ($12.95), fried cod cakes that are light and airy on the outside, with a fine blend of nonfishy cod and potatoes inside. The experience was heavenly, like biting into a cloud. It’s so much finer than any croquette I’ve had here.

My first experience at Adega was like meeting a handsome stranger. I was instantly smitten. But over a few encounters, the mystery and attraction fades a bit, and the initial rush of excitement leads to settling into a comfortable routine with a menu that strikes me as equivalent to good home cooking. Restaurants do take shortcuts, for example, but I don’t expect kidney beans to taste as if they came out of a Van Camp’s can, or use of canned black olives rather than, say, the galegas of the olive-growing region, or if those are too hard to come by, more readily available manzanillas or kalamatas.

A local Portuguese couple I talked to said they recently returned from a trip to Portugal and that the food at Adega is decent, even if flavors didn’t quite match fare they had in that country. Even so, they liked what they tried. Not having the luxury of living in a Portuguese household, I’ll take what I can get as a matter of variety.

THERE APPEARS to be a lot on the menu at first, but a closer inspection reveals it’s not as deep as hoped. After a while you wonder, where are the pork and garlic sausages, cheeses, egg dishes, piri piri and cilantro flavors? There’s such a thing as playing it too safe. Adega has made a good start, but I hope the repertoire will increase over time.

Brazilian dishes are available Fridays and Sundays, an addition made recently, so I wasn’t able to try them, but the primary lure appears to be the classic feijoada, a bean stew with pork and a touch of citrus. I can’t wait to try this dish because the only version I know is one I’ve made myself out of a cookbook.

The standard menu is the same at lunch and dinner, and as far as depth, there’s not much distinctive about a roster of steak, pork or chicken sandwiches ($8.95 to $9.95) all served the same way, topped with sauteed onions and red peppers on French bread with french fries. Those are ideal for lunch time, if you have a full hour. Items are slow to emerge from the kitchen.

If you’re in a rush, there’s a lunch buffet from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. that changes daily. I went one day with the intention of trying it, but by local expectations the offerings are scant: three entrees, two tossed green salads, two types of rice. Of the entrees, there was a four-cheese chicken and mushroom macaroni, which seemed fairly typical for an American menu; roast pork; and dobrada, tripe stew, for which I wasn’t in the mood. So my friend had the innocuous steak sandwich ($8.95), and I tried the filets de tilapia recheados ($16.95), tilapia rolled around surimi stuffing and layered with a creamy tomato bisque. Despite years of attempts to sway diners to the allure of tilapia, the fish is no more popular now than when there was a push to re-brand it as sunfish. I actually don’t mind it, and the tender texture worked beautifully with the sauce.

The aforementioned pasteis de bacalhau are a must here, and the garlic sauce is intense in another appetizer of camarao ao alho, or sauteed shrimp ($13.95) splashed with white wine and finished with a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. Both these dishes come in portions that can be shared with drinking buddies.

Also offered is fried calamari ($10.95) and clams steamed in white wine and garlic ($13.95). The Portuguese couple I talked to loved the sauteed gizzards ($10.95) in a tomato moela sauce. Gizzard lovers can follow up on their recommendation. I prefer other meats than these chewy little organs.

From there, move on to the soups, caldo verde ($4.95) and Portuguese bean soup ($5.95). The funny thing is that if you do an online search for Portuguese bean soup, you’ll find one Hawaii recipe after another, making it more of a state dish than national soup of Portugal, where caldo verde claims that title. It’s made with heaps of healthful kale, plus potatoes, onion and chourico sausage. Adega’s Portuguese bean soup is also much blonder than local concoctions, but it hits the same comfort note.

Another favorite is a dish of pork and clams stewed with tender potatoes and layered with those black olives. The tiny clams were inconsequential, but I loved the pork and potatoes in the light tomato, garlic, onion and wine sauce.

Also worth trying is delicious grilled salmon in lemon and caper sauce ($16.95), though again, it’s something you’re just as likely to find in an Italian restaurant. And sirloin ($19.95) layered with Portuguese ham and a fried egg is little more than a novelty to all but the most carnivorous. The ham and egg don’t do much to enhance tough steak. It’s accompanied by fried potato rounds (translation: potato chips).

For dessert there’s the traditional arroz doce, or rice pudding with cinnamon, and creme brulee. But I saw most people ordering the more exotic serradura, a layered dessert with a treacly sweet condensed milk base, a sort of vanilla pudding layered with crushed biscuits. I liked the textures of the pudding and biscuit powder together but could handle no more than four spoonfuls of the sweet mass.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.