Six-hour, slow cooked suckling pig and red cabbage slaw.

Empanadas.

Sirloin steak and polenta with provolone cheese.

Tuna with asparagus.

Beetroot salad with goat’s cheese.

Negronis upstairs.

Negroni for me.

Mood lighting.

Foosball table.

Porteno is one of the cool kids. Full of fashionable people, attractive waitstaff situated in a multi-floored rockabilly kind of a place. But what’s great about Porteno is that it’s more than just cool, it boasts amazingly good Argentinian food that has you reminiscing about it the next morning.

You only have to say the words suckling pig and I’m salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Trouble is, the six hour, slow cooked suckling pig at Porteno is so sought after that usually only the early sittings get to sample its deliciousness. Fortunately, my persistent friend phoned, emailed, voicemailed and in person-ed made sure that we would have suckling pig even at our 9pm reservation. And yes, it was worth the effort. The crispy crackling and the soft, milky meat. Damn, salivating again.

So I’m clearly a fan of the suckling pig. However, the menu is such that you could pretty much choose anything off it and it would be delicious. Even the bread ($2 per person) with the pork pate, olive oil and olive tapenade was ridiculously good. It’s too hard to pick my favourite dish of the night – the sirloin beef was tender and perfectly cooked, the polenta with provolone cheese was so soft and creamy you knew it had to be bad for you and the tuna was thick and flavoursome.

My only issue was that it all ended too fast. The dishes came out so quickly that we were done in 90 minutes. Fortunately, we took whatever wine we had left and wandered upstairs to Gardel’s Bar and continued drinking their delicious but strong cocktails and badly playing foosball.

Yes Porteno, I will be back.

Porteño’s details:

Address: 358 Cleveland St  Surry Hills 2010
Telephone: 02-8399-1440
Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday for dinner
Website: www.porteno.com.au