Our visit to Port O' Call was our final sojourn outside of Rosewood's hotel where we are staying. Restaurants at Rosewood Bermuda are so good there was no need to leave the property, however our UK concierge backed by Rosewood Bermuda's concierge pre-booked 7 different...recommended restaurants in a row for us during our stay at Rosewood. I was not intending to post reviews on TripAdvisor as I really did not expect any of them to be terrible or particularly great and I only only get around to reviewing a tiny minority of the restaurants we visit. I need to be really motivated, one way or another, to spend time writing reviews.
I did however consult Tripadvisor to read about 10 of the restaurants that were recommended by concierge and we chose 7. I expected just a normal week of dining out at perfectly pleasant restaurants, with no reviewing needed. It turned out rather differently.
Our first dinner out was at another restaurant, which was so disappointing I just had to post a review describing the experience, given we don’t fly all the way from the UK just to have an upsetting experience especially after paying $110 to be driven between restaurant and hotel. Given I have posted a bad review of this first Bermuda restaurant visited, I wanted to balance this by posting a review on any especially good restaurant... every one of the other restaurants we visited was especially good this is one of the best:-
Port O’Call is brilliant, a culinary treat starting with the first bite and ending with the most astonishing, reality defying cheesecake we have ever experienced anywhere.
Starting with the warm welcome on entering from the owner, a terrific guy and highly talented restaurateur originally from Huddersfield, our main server was the most wonderful young lady with a beautiful name...Calvina. She deserves a special mention. Every time she came to our table it just made us smile as she was always beaming, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the cuisine and a brilliant server who guided us well.
Much of Bermuda is in a quite special time warp, and may it remain so... why should it change just because big cities do? It is an intrinsic part of it's charm. It follows that there are some restaurants that haven’t changed in decades and that includes their menu. This has proved to be most entertaining and enjoyable and so it was a change to find a modern, trendy and interesting menu/atmosphere/everything at Port O'Call. There was a different feel, a bit of a buzz, this is clearly a very popular restaurant with locals as well as visitors with people sitting around the bar and enjoying drinks after work outside, The Restaurant filled up as we started enjoying our dinner and we soon realised why.
We started with a rockfish carpaccio and a raw tuna creation, both in the most original of dressings and embellishment and tasting quite unique. These went down perfectly with rosé wine. Different and hugely enjoyable. We then had the halloumi which came in thick, moist slices instead of the usual thin slices served by most restaurants. We also enjoyed the Wahoo carpaccio, all sublime, absolutely delicious.
A main course of Wahoo fish with a creamed potato and perfectly cooked vegetables was absolutely delicious and surpassed only by Chef Gerry Adams' Wahoo fish at Rosewood resort which was off the scale phenomenal…and unbeatable.
I asked Calvina if she could recommend a main course which should not be missed... as a result of which I ended up enjoying the most excellent lamb dish. This was easily Michelin star standard, succulent, melt in your mouth, tasty, perfection.
Portions are sensible which is just as well given we tried so many dishes but we still just about had room for dessert. Given Calvina had been so reliable with her earlier recommendations including the specials, I asked what desert must not be missed and without hesitation was advised to try the cheesecake. As this was Calvina's favourite we did exactly that:-
THE CHEESECAKE
This was quite simply astonishing. The most enormous slice of cheesecake turned up and it was standing up, immaculately, not on its' side. And yet this was so unusually light for a cheesecake it seemed to be gravity defying due to its size. I have never before experienced a cheesecake in well over half a century of dining out which tasted so wonderful. This restaurant could invent a whole line of different flavoured cheesecakes based on this astonishing method and make it famous. It is so good it should be branded. 25 or so years ago I used to know a businessman in London whose hobby was making cheesecakes, he had also come up with something quite special albeit nothing like this one. He switched careers, moving into supplying his cheesecakes to restaurants in London and he then co-founded a well-known restaurant chain which also sold his cheesecake and ended up selling out and presumably retiring. A cheesecake as good as this should be marketed and exploited as it is absolutely brilliant.
We enjoyed a wonderful dinner and looking around at the other tables, so did everyone else. This restaurant offers great value and I'm sure every item on the menu will be special. We would never return to Bermuda without booking again and we highly recommend you visit even if only for some cheesecake and a coffee during the day.More