Tokkotai — Restaurant in Porto

We ate dinner here on our trip to Porto a few weeks ago. It was the top meal of the trip, no contest.

Wine was amazing, and our very friendly server/host was super helpful in helping us make our choices. Everyone here was very friendly and kind.

The restaurant is beautiful and I love that they have multiple distinct eating spaces.

On to the food…

Mushrooms were amazing as others have commented.

In raw land, we had:

Flambé tuna: tasty af. Sashimi: yellowtail is the best I remember having, love the seasoning they put in top, and chu toro was par. Salmon batera: yum! fun version of a roll kinda (but pressed, not rolled).

Next we moved on to the hot stuff…

First up was the seafood rice hot dish. Oh my. It was stuffed full of fresh seafood, and every single bite was cooked perfectly. No fishy flavors here or rubbery over-cooked textures, just perfection. The rice with it was amazing as well. So much flavor.

I was in the fence about ordering the a5 wagyu, but it was soo worth it. It melted in your mouth and the beefy flavor was out of this world. The rice served with it is this rich stuff that I couldn’t get enough of. It was very different than the rice served with the seafood rice.

If I have to give a negative, it’s that the cocktails were very tasty but way too sweet for our tastes, and the music sounded a bit like jazz in the cheesy elevator music style. /shrug

Sitting at the sushi bar was really fun as we got to observe the guys making their delicious art, and the banter was fun. Even if we couldn’t understand it haha.

We ate at our local Japanese joint recently which made me appreciate just how fresh and flavorful the fish was at Tokkotai.

Would no doubt return here in the future!

Ps: my quickly snapped pics don’t do the...

Starting with the positives, the sushi was fresh and tasty. Desserts were also good. However in terms of price/quality it could be better, mainly because this is a rather expensive place.

On the negative side is the service, which is very dysfunctional. Everyone is nice and polite but the level of service delivered doesn’t match that attitude. We had to wait more than 30min after we got seated for a waiter to come to our table. When we were able to get the attention of one of them, he told us that he was not the one that could take our order and had to call one of his colleagues instead. In the meantime at the back of the room, there were 4 waiters looking at each other. We also asked for 2 dishes to be served as starters and they ended up coming after our main dishes. We also got something that we didn’t order. And at the end we had to wait more than 30min for our desserts. I want to point out again that everyone was super nice with us, however that is far from enough to have a good service and even further from a great one, which considering the prices at this place, should be what they...

Truly incredible restaurant - great addition to Porto’s culinary scene. Having lived in several places with top restaurants in the past (London, Monaco etc.) I felt that Porto lacked a high class restaurant offering a combination of delicious food, great service and vibrant atmosphere. Finally Tokkotai addressed this niche: the restaurant is super beautiful (clearly lots of investment and top designer work involved), there is very cool music, great atmosphere overall and food is just delicious with very fresh ingredients and lots of creativity. Finally, staff is doing fantastic job - they help a lot with recommendations, being extremely friendly and helpful at the same time. The sommelier is also a great expert and is a gem for wine lovers (very interesting wines to try by the way). It’s also a great place for cocktails before or after dinner as they have awards winning bartender and an awesome terrace for warm evenings. Overall, I’d say Tokkotai offers an experience of a top restaurant in London or New York, but for very reasonable price. Worth every dollar spent as the experience is...