Just wrapped up a five day/five night visit to Braga. In between the churches, the afternoon beers, the 20-year-old white port wines, and the unfortunate European children being dragged around by their parents, we stumbled upon Restaurante O Jaco. It's off the beaten path, on a small street off of Adrade Corvo--right before Dom Diogo de Sousa (the main street where everything happens in Braga).
The waiter, Francisco, is charming, in a warm, vaudeville, intimate kind of way. By the second night, he remembered that we switched out our roasted potatoes for french fries and we didn't even have to ask. By our third night in a row coming here, he knew we were about the house Vino Tinto. To receive that kind of welcome, in only a few days was really a nice touch to a splendid all-around time in Braga.
We tried the grilled douro which was grilled to perfection. We had the pork chops, again, which were cooked to perfection. (We both had those dishes twice...) On our last night there, we decided to switch it up. I asked Francisco, in what sort of Portuguese I was able to piece together from the Spanish I know, what he recommended instead of the Douro and the pork chops. He said to go with the Bacalhau and with the steak strips. We were floored. The cut of cod was a thick, juicy piece of cod, seared to (for lack of a better word) perfection and the steak strips, cooked rare, and seasoned only with a little bit of salt and pepper melted upon placing it in our mouths.
Restaurante O Jaco is an off-the-beaten restaurant with excellent quality food and with warm service at very affordable prices. Clean and elegant inside, but not stuffy, it definitely has a different kind of ambiance than most other restaurants on the strip. Think of the most upscale restaurant you've ever been in that has a TV showing a Barcelona game, that's Jaco! In terms of service: Francisco stopped by a few times to ask us how everything was, to joke with us, and to ask us if we needed anything more. (Not one other waiter in Portugal has treated us this way in the two weeks we've been here!) Definitely visited more often by locals than by tourists--large groups, folks eating alone, if you know good food, you come here.
Without a doubt, O Jaco is in the top three restaurants I've ever visited. (And frankly, cannot recall a better one right now.) We said good bye tonight to Francisco and the chef (whose name we did not get, unfortunately) and they asked us when we'd be back. When we come back, I don't think we'll spend more than a weekend in Braga, but each one of those nights we'll be at O Jaco for sure. read more
