Because June is Portuguese Heritage Month, the venue for last Sunday night’s supper was almost a given. Recently, a number of lesser-known ethnic cuisines have come to the fore, but the dishes from the left-hand side of the Iberian peninsula remain largely unknown.

This, even though Vancouverites like them: you’ve only got to check the roaring success of Manuel Ferreira’s Senova, especially its suckling-pig nights. Odder still, given the fuss we make over other European cooking, is that this is food made with familiar ingredients.

Why Portuguese cuisine is still a terra incognita even to adventurous diners is that the country itself—the usual introduction to others’ tables—still doesn’t rank high on the list as a holiday spot. Novelty discovered abroad is often assimilated into the mainstream, which is why pad Thai is now as popular as chicken noodle soup, and salsa as prevalent as ketchup. Recognize this and you start to understand how, in the U.K., with over 8,000 Indian restaurants, chicken tikka masala became the national dish.

Is it likely that the same will happen with pork with clams, omnipresent in Portugal? Could be. Who knows, eventually we may even be picking up sopa de peixe and bolinhos de bacalhau at takeout windows on Robson Street.

But not yet, so instead we drove along Kingsway to A Taste of Portugal. For over four years, this restaurant has quietly been hanging its shingle out a couple blocks east of Victoria Drive. Décor: Portuguese; or rather, Portuguese kitchen. Dozens of blue-and-white plates, pottery serving dishes, and gleaming copper pans fill its walls. Room: large. Customers: according to co-owner George Dionisio, about 40 percent Portuguese and 60 percent everyone else. Immediate impressions: positive, because by now the breadbasket was on the table.

There was cornbread and a muscular sourdough-ish type, both made by George’s mother and business partner, Lucilia, as is the slice of cheese that comes with it, along with a pot of black olives. In Portugal, they bring you things like these, then add them to the bill. Here they’re gratis.

To the thinking diner, a menu note like “Add veggies and rice or potatoes to your appetizer for only $1.95!” hints at large tapas, and they are. More of the bocconcinilike homemade cheese sat on five large tomato slices adorned with olives and drizzled with olive oil, both from Portugal.

After that, we focused on fish. Walk around Lisbon, and, even before you see them, you can smell the yellowish slabs of salted, dried cod in the bacalhau shops. The Dionisios cook it traditional-style, grilled with potatoes and other veggies, or as a starter, formed into pasteis de bacalhau, which are what every fish cake would be if it could: savagely hot, audibly crunchy, light and tasty inside, and with lemon wedges to balance the flavour.

In seaside places like Nazaré just north of Lisbon, you can settle into a small café, order a bottle of vinho verde, and watch while, outside on the pavement, fat sardines sputter over a charcoal grill, emitting delicious smoky, fishy smells. It’s all done in the kitchen here, but the result is much the same: four whole fish, grilled crisp, served with lemon again, and sprinkled with a confetti of red pepper and onion to cut the richness. You should know that these taste—and, with their heads and tails, look—like real fish, not those innocuous white chunks sold in the supermarket. But at some stage on your lifelong culinary journey, this is one ravine you have to jump.

Pork and clams combined sounds challenging, too, but works in the same way that sausage and shrimp work in paella. Here, carne de porco Alentejana translates as sweet, meaty clams in the shell, and fork-tender chunks of pork in a buttery, tomato-y, winy sauce that’s almost too rich, served over chunks of fried potato. Ooof. I needed an espresso after that.

Barbecued chicken, simple fish dishes, prawns with piri-piri sauce, febras de porco, that belly-warming kale-and-potato soup called caldo verde—this is true Portuguese food. Dishes arrive promptly, service is good, you can even bring the sprogs and let them have at the kids’ menu.

Several families were there Sunday night, including a mischievous cluster of small girls and a baby in a basket. Saturdays, there’s live music, mostly Portuguese. And did I mention reasonable? With a half-litre of house red, our big Portuguese supper for two came to just shy of $60, tax included.