Dinner for Two: Leitao

[This restaurant review is part of a series of reviews. A broad description of the series format and other reviews in the series can be found here]

Menu

Leitao serves big plates, so we actually went twice to get a good feel for the menu. Both times we shared, neither of the meals were 'coursed'. In total we tried six things off the menu.

First meal:

• Bolinhos de Bacalhau (cod croquettes)

• Chourico Portugues Assado (grilled chorizo)

• Salad de Polvo (octopus salad)

• Pasteis de nata (Portuguese egg-tart — free)

• Red wine + ginger beer

Cost: ~$120

Second meal:

• Ameijoas em Caldeirada (Clams)

• Piri piri chicken

• Ginger beer

Cost: $90

Full menu here

Mia's review

I recall the first time I ate at Leitao so fondly: surprising bites of flavor, ample sauces to dip and experiment with, and an overall sense of pleasant satisfaction at the end of the meal. What stood out to me most was the Salad de Polvo dish – perfectly grilled octopus paired with bursts of flavor from vesuvio tomatoes – a dish they’ve nailed each time I’ve been there (I might’ve gone without Amol a few times¹). The croquettes were delicious but felt slightly too expensive for the portion. The linguica was tasty, but if we hadn't asked for an accompanying sauce, it would’ve probably felt like too much of one flavor to be a fully balanced dish. Despite a few concerns, the standout octopus, the flavor of the dishes, and the free pastel de nata at the end made it an overall positive dining experience.

Our second trip, however, was less magical (to be fair, we did order fewer things). Leitao is known for their Piri Piri chicken, so we thought we’d center the meal around that as our main entree. We added an order of the Ameijoas em Caldeirada which were marked on the menu as “Chef Recommended”.

This was my first time having Piri Piri chicken, and after having heard a lot about it from a few friends familiar with the popular chain, Nando’s², I was excited to try it. Though definitely delicious, eating a whole half chicken cooked in piri piri sauce felt overwhelming. The thing that I chase when dining out, a continuous experience of perfect bites with unexpected yet undeniably tasty flavors, felt missing. The dish was purely one thing: piri piri chicken.³ To be fair, we could’ve ordered sides if we wanted more variety, but the portion sizes were rather large. With just one app and one entree, we were already full.

The clams were well seasoned in a rich broth infused with flavor from the chorizo and tomatoes, but ultimately I had a similar “complaint” as the Piri Piri chicken: the dish felt like a lot of just one flavor.⁴

Leitao really feels like the perfect place to take a sizable (4-6) group of friends to split a bunch of dishes. Each dish will be packed with flavor, and with a larger group you’d get a decent amount of variety and balance in your meal. But for date night/a meal for two, I think there are other restaurants I might look for an open spot at first.

Overall, I’d say Leitao has a good price for the value, but it depends on what you’re getting and how many people you’re splitting with.

3 out of 5.

P.S. I’m not sure that my only critique is the portion size and subsequent lack of variety due to how much food two people can split. There’s a Turkish restaurant we go to called Tava Turkish and Mediterranean.⁵ I go there for one thing and one thing only: the yogurtlu adana kebab (well sometimes also the manti). It’s a big portion of food and I wouldn’t say I’m getting an ample amount of variety from the dish, but the flavor profile is so deep and complex that each bite feels satisfying and “new”. Amol thinks it’s mostly driven by all the animal fat in the dish 😅 which is probably fair. Something about the combination of lamb juice, yogurt, and tomatoes with the right amount of heat and spices that leads to a dish that I could eat a concerning amount before wanting to stop. I think I was missing either a sense of “I can’t put down my fork, this is so good” or “the dishes are so interesting and so far from what I could create that I want to come back”, despite some of the bites being really good.

While I was inclined to come back a few times after my first meal at Leitao, I find myself unsure if I’ll choose it for an upcoming date night or solo trip for the reasons above (but again, a likely choice for a group meal!).

Amol's Review

The best thing about Leitao is also the worst thing about Leitao: the portion sizes.

Big portion sizes are somewhat unique to American dining. The Europeans have never figured out the particular joy of getting a stack of pancakes, two eggs, hash, sausage, and bacon at 3am for 15 bucks. Eating out in the US is like going to grandma's, you're going to be treated well and leave full to bursting and with leftovers, because that's the American way. But NYC dining — or at least, the fancier parts of NYC dining — buck the larger American trend. Yes, you can still get your diner food and your jumbo McDonald's soda, and the NY Steakhouse is a classic exception, but as a rule the better a restaurant the more expensive the food for a smaller quantity.

Portion sizes have trade-offs.

Generally it's more economical to cook at scale, so larger portions tend to be cheaper-per-pound. But food, like all things, has significant diminishing returns.⁶ The first bite of a NY slice is always heaven, the last is…well, still pretty good, but generally worse than the first bite. You get used to it, and maybe a bit tired of it, and it gets colder and soggier and less defined as you eat it, and so on. And larger portions means you can't try as many things in the same meal. That's not necessarily a bad thing — when I'm getting steak, I really just want steak, and I want a lot of it.⁷ But it does mean that the meal is higher variance. If you order something that you don't really like, you're stuck with a lot of it and it's terrible.

Leitao gives really large portions. Not like, swim team large. But significantly larger than many of the other restaurants we normally go to.

In our first meal, I think the larger portions were great. I'm a sucker for chorizo, so when they pulled out and grilled two full sausages I was ecstatic. And the chunk of octopus that they gave us was the highlight of the meal, they nailed that crispy-outside-tender-inside that is so hard to do well and gave us a ton of it to boot. It may have been the best octopus I've ever had.⁸ Meanwhile, the croquettes were really flavorful, and both the croquettes and the linguica paired really well with a spicy sauce that the server brought out on request. (Definitely ask for the spicy sauce⁹ with the sausage, I think it can be too salty over time otherwise but the sauce cuts right through it and I could have eaten that pairing all night). I think the server also liked us, because he brought out a free pasteis de nata to end the meal, and honestly it was good enough that I'd drop in just to pick one up for the road.

In our second meal, the portion sizing was more eh. I came in a bit less hungry since I had half a sandwich like 3 hours before. We didn't love the clams, they felt a bit watered down and not as flavorful as we would have liked. And though Leitao served probably the best and most flavorful piri piri chicken I've ever had, we were definitely tired of it by the end.

I don't mean to be too harsh on Leitao for that second meal. It's not a tasting menu, so there's more responsibility on the diner to order things that they know they like,¹⁰ and I personally knew up front that I don't generally like clams OR piri piri chicken — we ordered them to get some variety on the menu for this review, but probably wouldn't order them otherwise. To some extent, the fact that I didn't enjoy the second meal as much is on me, not on the restaurant.

Still. The large portion sizes make good things great and mid things bad.

I think if Leitao was more expensive, that second meal would have felt bad. But as it is, Leitao feels pleasantly affordable for a date night. It doesn't break the bank, you get a solid amount of food and actually leave full, each dish is pretty good, and there's a fair bit of variety for a diner to choose their adventure. To me, Leitao is definitely in the upper half of the distribution for value-per-dollar. That helps offset the inherent variance with large portion sizes — I can go back again and again and know that even if I didn't really like a particular dish, it's not going to burn a hole through my bank account.

Net net, I liked leitao, and I'd go back. But I think the best way to experience the restaurant is a) when you had a small lunch and b) with at least 3 other people where everything is shared. More people is always a great way to offset the variance problem with portion sizing. You can try more things, and pick and choose what you enjoy from a larger sampling of the menu. And since most of the menu actually is really good in smaller sizes, it's a straightforward win-win.

3.5 out of 5.

(One passing thought: I liked how Leitao had set up their seating. They have these long couches built into the walls on either side that allow them to be really flexible with how they set up their tables. No such thing as a two top or a four top, they can just slide a few tables around and create a huge variety of table settings. Very clever!)

What does each rating mean?

If we are rating a restaurant, that already means the place has merit. Something about it piqued our interest, or we got a recommendation from someone we generally trust. That said, we are exceptionally opinionated eaters, so we recommend modulating all of our ratings against your own tastes and preferences.

1 — this was a disappointing meal with very few redeeming qualities. We would not come back and would strongly recommend against it. We expect very few restaurants to fall into this category.

2 — a good meal, but not worth the price; there's better in the city for cheaper. We likely won't come back here.

3 — good price for the value. We expect most of the restaurants we review to fall in this category, including most of our 'go-to' casual spots.

4 — an excellent restaurant. Either a fantastic meal at a high price, or extremely good dollar value. We likely will be back here, and will go out of our way to be back multiple times, often with friends.

5 — one of the best restaurants we've been to, or meals that we've had. This is a restaurant that is best-in-class in its category or at its price point. We expect very few restaurants to fall into this category.

Restaurants change. The half life of a review like this one is about 6 months. That is, every 6 months, you should trust this review 50% less than you did the previous 6 months.

Pictures

Clockwise from the top left: (what was left of the) Octopus Salad, Pasteis de Nata, Bacalao, Linguica

1. Amol: I think between the two of us we’ve been here like 6 times in the last 2 months?

2. Amol: It’s only worth going if it’s cheeky

3. Amol: tbf, that is kinda what it says on the tin. I generally don't get piri piri chicken when its on the menu for this reason, and (apologies to some of our readers) I don't really like Nando's much either

4. Amol: I think the piri piri and the clams also had a similar flavor profile overall, which exacerbated that feeling of sameness

5. This is just recency bias from our brunch this morning 🙄🙄🙄

6. Mia: unless it's the yogurtlu adana kebab from Tava :)

7. Mia: my new hypothesis is anything with animal fat tastes good enough to encourage multiple bites of the same dish.

8. Mia: and you REALLY like octopus

9. Mia: whatever sauce they gave us was really good 👀

10. Mia: hmm this is a fair point I hadn't really considered