The Cork & Tile
Anna Britten has a mini-break in Gandy’s Street’s authentic new Portuguese restaurant
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f any corner of Exeter best resembles Lisbon’s bohemian Bairro Alto, it’s Gandy Street. Which means that new Portuguese restaurant/bar The Cork & Tile already feels like it belongs here – something you definitely couldn’t have said about its recent, ill-fated predecessors, a Harry Potter-themed café and a pseudo-Cuban cantina. Owner Neil Perry has worked in hospitality across the country and beyond, so he knows what he’s doing. Crucially, by dint of marriage to a Portuguese national (who is also the business’s co-owner), Neil also knows plenty about Portugal – we learn from talking to him that it is one of England’s oldest allies, the variety and quality of its wine is remarkable and that Portuguese people “talk about sardines the way we talk about the weather”. And there’s a Portuguese mother-and-son team in the kitchen – Ana and Ricardo – who will teach you everything you need to know about that country’s rich, robust, meat-and-fish-centred cuisine. Before we pick up our forks, a word on the place itself –
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at street-level you’ll find a fresh, modern café/bar, with a light-filled back room; upstairs, three cosy dining rooms. A blue, white and green paint scheme pops with splashes of hot, Iberian colour, and – as you’d hope given the restaurant’s name – cork and tile both feature heavily. Do check out the beautiful cork wall coverings from Beach Brothers in Exeter (they did Thomasina Miers’ Wahaca chain, too), and the many traditional azulejo ceramic patterned tiles. Items of authentic Portugalia adorn the walls, from fans and maps to paintings and napkins Ana decorated as a child. Fado plays softly in the background. Seated in an upstairs window overlooking the street we nibble on a selection of petiscos (“bits and bobs”): a rissol de carne (a piping hot and crispy, meat-filled, breadcrumbed turnover), a rissol de camarao (same, but with shrimp) and bolinhos bacalhau (salted cod fritters). The standout is a small bowl of pica pau (“woodpecker”), which turns out to be chunks of beef and chorizo in a rich, reddy-brown ‘beer sauce’ that actually contains port, wine and brandy, too, dotted with crunchy pickles, olives and fresh parsley. It’s a sweet-salty delight that’s traditionally eaten with toothpicks over Super Bocks, but no less moreish with a