Cowbridge Road East, Cardiff.
Food **** Atmosphere ****
Setting up home on Cowbridge Road East is Mãe Maria, the latest addition to Canton’s ever developing food scene. Missing the flavours of home and noting the lack of mainland Portuguese restaurants (Guilford Crescent’s Madeira focuses on Madeiran cuisine) in Cardiff, Portuguese siblings Laura and Jorge established the restaurant to give Cardiff’s inhabitants a taste of Portugal. With the boom of the Nata & Co. Portuguese bakeries, with which Laura was involved, it was the next logical step then to open a restaurant to show off a smorgasbord of delights for the city’s Lusophiles.
In fairness, calling Mãe Maria a restaurant doesn’t do it justice; it’s divided into a restaurant, a taverna bar and a Portuguese deli, making it a great location for everything from a coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast, to heavier meals for lunch and dinner. The restaurant itself has an unpretentious atmosphere, perfect for good home-cooked style food. To start with, we sampled deep fried prawn, meat and codfish rissoles, a selection of Portuguese cheeses and rojões com castanhas (fried pork with chestnuts), washed down with one of their many, many wines. The first thing to strike me was how rich the food was, with the delectable taste of port defining the full-flavoured sauces. This was followed by francesinha (a moist baked sandwich with steak, ham, sausages, fried egg, melted cheese and a rich sauce) and bifinhos de cogumelos, which almost resembled a chicken stroganoff. Both were delightful, and by this point we were almost ready to explode.
To finish, orange flan and a bread pudding from their extensive range of Portuguese deserts; both were rich and bursting with flavour. Mãe Maria are all about range, catering for all sort of events, and offering a huge selection of dishes and wines. While it is still early days for the restaurant, the combination of great food, knowledgeable and passionate staff, almost unbelievable prices and range shows clear promise.
029 2039 9174 / www.facebook.com/maemaria.uk
words LUKE OWAIN BOULT