We start with a dish of queijo fresco-a soft white cheese that evokes a mild mozzarella with an almost custardlike texture. It is served with sliced tomatoes, chopped red onions, thinly sliced ham, and a garlic vinaigrette speckled with red pepper flakes. Portuguese food has a whole vocabulary of tastes and textures with which most Americans are unfamiliar, and it makes for curious and rewarding eating. Even the bread we use to mop up the delicious, garlicky wine broth from the squid has a crumbly, milky quality about it that I remember from the Portuguese bakeries of my childhood. My palate has grown used to chewy artisanal sourdoughs and wheat-walnut loaves, so the sweeter Portuguese bread is unusual and delightful.
Main courses have the same kind of unfiltered straightforwardness.
Bacalhau, the traditional baked dry salt cod, is an enormous square of grilled fish that's flaky, still faintly salty from its long immersion, and glistening with hot oil. It's served alongside caramelized onions and fried potatoes. Our young Azorean waiter describes another main course, the shrimp with spicy piri-piri sauce, with the fervor of a native Bostonian recommending his favorite clam chowder. What arrives is a towering, layered square of canned pineapple rings, white cake, whipped cream, and sweetened coconut. This is Cambridge, I think, snagging the last bite.