Located beside a luxury homeware store in the upscale Quinta de Largo area of Portugal’s Algarve, Austa is a boutique restaurant launched three years ago by a young English couple.
And if my experience one recent midweek evening is any indication, the project has been a success, most of the tables being filled before 9pm.
Having returned from a back-packing adventure around South America, Emma and David Campus from the Hammersmith-Chiswick area of London decided to join Emma’s parents, Simon and Judy Clayton, who were building their own homeware store.
“Initially, the idea was to open a simple cafe beside the store, but that soon developed into a fully-fledged restaurant,” David told me between courses.
Austa, meaning ‘south wind,’ can accommodate around 30 people inside and about the same number outside on an open terrace, though – having a small staff – the couple don’t operate both together.
With floor-to-ceiling windows, the restaurant’s interior features a modern minimalist design with a nod to local influences. Seat benches are made of salt blocks that resemble bronze-colored marble, the clay-like walls are meant to resemble traditional Algarve construction and much of the furniture is made from local acacia trees.
David and Emma have created an innovative drinks menu, including a refreshing pink grapefruit and rosemary negroni and a gin-based cocktail with coriander, cedar and white port and another with pennyroyal.
There’s no shortage of wines either. I counted more than 30 vintages, including sparkling varieties, the oldest vintage being a 1996 red from the the south-central Alentejo region. Non-alcoholic beverages include homemade kombucha comprising a blend of loquat, a local fruit, and ginger.
Chef David Barata’s meat and seafood menu, as is common in the Algarve, is based on sharing plates with three dishes advised per person. Our dinner began with salt and linseed bread from a local bakery served with cultured marmite butter. The extra virgin olive oil served was from Evora.
Our feast began in earnest with oysters laced with seaweed oil, pickled cucumber, with a drop of homemade piri piri sauce and a feather of dill from their own impressive organic garden at the rear of the restaurant. Lamb croquettes followed, bonbons of the shredded meat with fermented garlic, fried in breadcrumbs, accompanied by lemon mayo.
My companion, a medical herbalist and lover of mushrooms not just for their taste but for their health benefits, loaded as they are with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, was delighted with the next course. An assortment of the celebrated fungi including shimeji, plurox and brown button, wild foraged, appeared at our table with leaves of chard, hollandaise sauce and croutons of sourdough bread that granted a crunchiness to the soft vegetables.
Up next was smoked cuttlefish, cut thin linguini-like with seaweed oil, which according to my poetic companion, “sends you to the bottom of the sea where earth meets water.”
A succulent T-bone steak aged for 45 days was our finale, leaving us so full we sadly had to decline dessert. As an alternative to steak, there was also an assortment of fish such as bream and skate.
If you happen to be in the Quinta de Largo area, pop in and say hello to Emma and David, you’re sure of a warm welcome. Austa also opens for breakfasts and lunches, the former featuring house-made banana bread with bananas from Portugal’s only mainland organic banana farm, and the latter, artisanal cheese, charcuterie plates and smoked fish from Vila Real de Santo António on the Spanish border.
