FRIENDLY  GOURMET DINNER at "O LEÃO DE PORCHES"

March 15^th, 2014

Porches

FLYER

Chers Confreres,

After the enjoyment of the romantic evening at Moiras Encantadas with the excellent modern Portuguese cuisine of Rogélio, the fine and joyful  Fado from Ondina and her two guitarists and the erotic paintings of Carla we now move on to one of our great FAVOURITES, "O´Leao de Porches" under the ownership and management of the very vivacious, ambitious and enterprising Bianca Salden ably supported by her partner Nuno Diogo. The kitchen is led by the young and very innovative Chef Daniel Inacio who is coming on in leaps and bounds.

 The cosy/gemutlich old style Portuguese restaurant "O´Leao de Porches" is located next to the old Church in the centre of Porches as shown on the attached Flyer. Bianca Salden who is our hostess for the dinner is a Belgian lady coming from a family in Antwerp who have been in the gastronomic and hotel business all of their lives and Bianca learnt the trade working in the restaurant of her mother before moving on to a brewery, representing beer brands and working with restaurants. Beer is the staple drink in Belgium. In late 2004 Bianca decided to move to Portugal and worked at the "O Leao de Porches" restaurant before taking it over at Easter 2005. In the meantime Bianca has managed to raise the gastronomic level of the restaurant to a very high standard. In 2012 the well known,  excellent British Chef George Tannock joined the restaurant for a few months before returning to London. During this period he managed to help her two young Portuguese Chefs raise the standard even higher.

In the meantime Chef Pedro Luis has moved on to the Bon Bon Restaurant of Nuno and Bianca in Sesmarias, Carvoeiro so that Daniel Inacio is the head chef at O´Leao.He spent 3 years from 2009 onwards training in Portimao before obtaining the Lausanne hotelier certificate. As part of his training period he worked at the 5* Vale Da Lapa Resort and at the 5* Vila Vita Parc. Subsequently in 2012 he worked on the BMW project at the Sheraton Pine Cliffs hotel before joining "O Leao de Porches". In the meantime since taking over sole responsibility almost one year ago Daniel has continued his innovative direction so that with his culinary expertise he can produce dishes with amazing and unusual tastes.He is not only very ambitious and competent but has lots of new ideas and is always proactively looking to look for, prepare and experiment with something different.

For our dinner on March 15 we have gone for a slightly "gamey" menu to represent the last of the "wintery" months.On the recommendation of Daniel the fish will be a "red" fish freshly caught in Sagres and depending on the availability on the day will be either Red Snapper or Red Mullet which as we all know are very tasty and not always to be found.The wines have been selected solely by Rod Frew, our V.Echanson to enhance the very enterprising menu so that we should have something to really look forward to. As noted above the restaurant (Tel:282 381 384 and 967 100 047) which is a charming seventeenth century country house is located in the centre of Porches, next to the Church in the Rua Da Igreja and is well signposted.  Porches is located on the N125 about 5 kms east of Lagoa and the GPS coordinates are: N37.125877 and W8.398448.

As noted on the Flyer please send your reservations and payments to our V.Chancelier/Argentier, Jos Zweegers. As always guests are very welcome and if you require any menu changes for dietary or other requirements please let Jos know. We look forward to welcoming you at O´Leao de Porches at 19:00 on Saturday March 15.

Best Regards

 et

VIVE LA CHAINE!

Michel Dressler