A Delightful Italian Lunch in Delco

My friend and former colleague, Brenda, and I recently got together for one of our periodic lunches. While I usually pick the restaurant, she asked if I’d be interested in checking out a Delaware County Italian restaurant that is a relatively short drive from both of us and I agreed after checking out their menu online. 

Portobello Cafe sits on a not-so-scenic stretch of US-13 in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, but the restaurant’s charming and cozy interior more than made up for that. 

Their menu is classic old-school Southern Italian, with a nice mix of seafood appetizers, salads, pasta, fish, chicken and veal. My wife tends not to be nuts about this style of food, so we don’t often go to such places. But I love it and was extremely happy with the options.

Both Brenda and I are big on shellfish, so I was a little surprised when she ordered a Caprese salad to start. I opted for mussels in a white wine sauce for my first course. 

Her salad was suitably colorful and earned high marks.

I’ve found it difficult to get ideally-sized mussels in recent years. Most often, they’re too small, but overly large is also an occasional issue. The ones that were presented to me by our server were slightly on the small side, but not as bad as I’ve experienced at a number of other places. 

And the sauce was fantastic. I took advantage of our basket of warm rolls to dip until my heart was content.

We both went the seafood pasta route for our main courses. Brenda chose one of the day’s specials – pappardelle with lobster and shrimp in a blush sauce, while I picked lobster ravioli in a creamy lobster-tomato sauce.

She was pleasantly surprised to see that her dish came with an entire lobster tail in addition to several large shrimp and wound up taking enough home for a second meal. 

The menu didn’t specify whether the pasta was house made, but my ravioli had such a light texture that I suspect it was. And there was ample lobster meat mixed with ricotta within them, while the sauce was, again, delicious.

I had some doubts before the meal because Portobello Cafe isn’t in an area known for its dining scene. But those doubts turned out to be unfounded. Hopefully I’ll return there some day to sample more of the menu. 

On a non-food note, I just happened to catch our two cats in a perfect pose while I had my phone handy recently and snapped what has to be among the cutest pet photos ever taken.