Lolita Vinoteca + Asador

All the food from small tapas to large plates as delicious. We all, however, felt that our dishes had been sitting out a while, and we’re not as hot as they could have been.

We had such a lovely and special night here. Our food was excellent — high points were the torchio pasta and the chicken liver mousse. We were in town from Boston and found this place on Eater, and it was the kind of neighborhood restaurant you would come back to again and again if you lived in the area. Only thing I wouldn’t order again was the rapini — tasted steamed and flavorless. Our server was friendly and dealt with a broken wine glass (our fault) very gracefully. Glad we tried this little spot!

Cozy, unique, refined and truly a foodie treat! The quality and simplicity shows the respect the chef’s have for showcasing ingredients and flavor. The small plates take customers on a culinary journey that packs a punch from the first tasting. The staff only elevates the experience with their participation in building the perfect food itinerary for their patrons. From the charcuterie pairings to the decadent almond garlic purée atop rustic, hearty bread; Lolita has you anxious for each course with mouth-​watering anticipation. By far my favorite dish was the steak tartare. Salty, fresh and unctuous; this bite is nothing short of inspired. The Chef’s reverence for each ingredient and the masterful way of bringing each flavor together to show their harmonious fusion that sets Lolita apart from other restaurants without being pretentious or fussy. With an ocean of choices in Portland, take a little detour to Congress St. and be prepared to have your culinary mind blown. Your tummy will thank you for it!

We were in Portland for only one night and with all the choices, our dinner spot was a tough choice. I am glad we landed on Lolita. It is a small place with a cozy neighborhood feel. The staff knew the food as well as any I’ve ever seen (as if they raised the ingredients on the farm and then cooked it for you). The price is even relatively low for the quality of food you are getting. I had their daily steak special and it was fantastic. We also dabbled in their selection of cheeses served with homemade sourdough, which could fill you up just on their own. Anyways, I don’t know when I will get back to Portland, but I plan to make it Lolita again despite all the great places I had to forego the first time.

Great little spot. We went for tapas Monday’s and it was great value. Squid ink and oven clams were both fantastic. The tapas that they brought out were unbelievably high quality. ⁴⁄₅ were excellent and very authenticly Spanish /​Portuguese.
One of the tapas was a cod ball arranchini and let me tell you it was better than the ones I had in Portugal.

The menu here makes no sense to me, and I am really, really smart.

My Lolita haiku:
Fine service shines bright
Local quality superb
Tapas Monday rocks
You can walk in on Monday with $ 20 in your pocket and have some great wine and unique tapas. We got there early and could spread out a bit in the dining room and have the full attention of the staff. These guys know what they are doing. Please don’t go.

We decided to stop by Lolita’s for a quick and late night Sunday dinner and sat at the bar. The atmosphere was surprisingly modern and cozy, the staff was extremely attentive and the food was delicious. I had the squid ink pasta, which was perhaps the best I’ve ever had. Wish we found this hidden gem sooner. I’ll definitely be back.

A Lolita haiku:
Happiness is a
Breakfast sammy like this one
Please don’t let this end
This is a wonderful place. One of my favorite little spots in Portland, so please don’t go.
1. The food is really, really good. I’m not a foodie, so I typically don’t care about, well, food. But it’s seriously good. They make their own wonderful bread, they have their own coffee. It’s lovely.
2. The beverages are divine, and a sneak peak into the fall/​winter list is super exciting. Chai something something booze something. Yes.
3. The service is awesome. Matt has served me a couple times now and he’s rock-​solid. And charming. And knowledgeable.
4. Seriously, that breakfast sandwich. I thought I knew about breakfast sandwiches – cheap and cheesy. NOPE. This one changed the game forever.
So please don’t go.

Stella and her staff do an outstanding job of wanting everyone to feel welcome, well fed and happy. Excellent drinks, and the food is so delicious and interesting. The lentil salad is one of my favorites and the pasta Nochia (sp?), can’t be beat, with just a tinge of zip!
I live in the area, am not the biggest foodie, but I do love what they are presenting.

It’s great to see the passion they have for food and service. This place defiantly isn’t for a quick lunch but if you have time to relax; go!

Really a hidden Portland gem. The food is fantastic, it’s small inside but cozy and cute. We ate at the bar and the bartenders were great. Attentive even though they were busy and helpful with food and cocktail selections. We had the torchini (definitely the best out of all four), summer squash tart, burrata and wood fired clams. Everything was excellent. It’s a bit of a walk from downtown/​Old Port area but completely worth it. Highly recommended and we will definitely be back when we visit Portland again!

«The Meal of the Year», and that’s coming from New Yorkers who take their food seriously.
Everything was flawless, deeply flavorful and many of the preparations were stunningly original. You know immediately this is place run by talent after one bite of their excellent home made sourdough. Try the farro with feta, the wood-​fired clams, any of their «toasts,» the pasta with peas and spicy sausage (torchio with ‘nduga), and best of all the lamb meatballs. The plum/​blueberry tart was a perfect dessert. And excellent cocktails. My one slight disappointment was the limited and not memorable selection of red wines by the glass.
Nonetheless, we’re planning on going back next week, before returning to NYC.

Great place to get a small snack or a full dinner. They have A lot of small dishes that can be combined with the real entrées. They have a pretty wide selection of wines which I don’t care about but the food is equally great. The place is pretty small so I suggest make a reservation especially during the weekend. That was a great mushroom bread an excellent cheese.
The only downside of this place is that it’s cramped with people so you end up dining with somebody next to you even if you don’t want to and portions are really really small and I think this is something that can be improved. If they were serving bigger portions I would think about this place to go there for lunch but as it is right now I’m not going to tpay $ 20 to be hungry.

Wasn’t a huge fan of the asado-​seemed like something I could make at home with very little meat. The dessert – a hazelnut chocolate cake – was incredible though!

I read about this place on Eater and decided to give it a try during my most recent trip to Portland, and I am really glad I did. Honestly the name kind of put me off because Vinotecas are often dowdy and sort of dated. Well, this place was quite the opposite. It was young, chill, had a great menu with a lot of inventive dishes, and has two chefs just absolutely killing it in the kitchen.
I am giving it a five based upon just three dishes we tried because all three were incredible. First of all, the chicken liver mousse here is amazing. It is one of the better chicken liver mousses my gf and I have ever eaten, and we have eaten a lot. It has a slight charred, smoky taste, as if they roast the livers first over wood. It seriously is god-​tier chicken liver mousse.
Second, the wood roasted clams were awesome. I mean I know this dish isn’t exactly rocket science, but the sheer size and quality of the clams they were working with coupled with the wood burning stove they had in this cute open kitchen made the dish more than the sum of its parts. The butter and amazing garnish of caramelized garlic helped as well.
Finally, while the vegetarian options might be a bit slight, the cauliflower with hummus and sumac was pretty great. The tart sumac and house-​made hummus worked really well with the lightly charred cauliflower. The dish needed a little more salt but whatever.
So, I don’t know. We just got three things. But they were awesome and we had a really nice time here and the chicken liver mousse was scary good. The end.

I have three favorite places for Tapas right now, and this is one of them!
There is some serious flavor with some major problems… each plate ends! I could eat each one of these plates as a full meal, let alone Tapas… oh, you can share these great dishes too, but I challenge you to being able to.
A dish not to miss has been on the menu from day one, the Torchio! This is the stuff that mouth watering dreams are made of. A bit of a spicy tomato awesomeness that leaves you wishing you stole each forkful from your friends as they try to steal your bites of greatness.
Yup, its good.
Oh and the steak was friggin amazing, cut well and cooked perfect (see photos!!)

Let me start this review off by saying that the service was super nice and attentive here, and that’s why they are earning 3 stars rather than two. I feel like they are doing some things right, but unfortunately also seem to be missing something.
Here were the highlights that I would recommend in order of goodness:
Squid ink pasta — absolutely the star of our meal, this left us both with smiles and matching black teeth
Cranberry panna cotta dessert — I’d never had cranberries on a panna cotta before, it felt both seasonally appropriate and refreshing. A very nice final note to end on.
Olives, coppa — hard to go wrong here though?
Steak tartar toast, Burrata toast — both were nice — I love Burrata and the touch of citrus zest was a nice change, however the bread was a little tough to split or chew
Good, but not quite there:
Marrow bones — nice, but needed salt… I feel like this is usually served with extra salt when I’ve gotten it elsewhere?
Sardine pot — kind of just plain canned fish flavor
One thing to note:
The toasts are basically single servings. They were tough to split between two people, maybe order one per person if you plan to split.

From the perspective of a very tired, very hungry vegetarian… this is not a place for me.
1. Tired
We came in on a Sunday night around 7:45pm. We didn’t leave the restaurant until 11pm because the service was so… so… sooooooooooo slow. I think we sat there for (no exaggeration) probably thirty minutes before our drinks even arrived (one negroni, one bottled beer, one draught beer, one neat tequila, and one champagne cocktail). Actually, they sat forgotten by the waiter on the bar for so long I considered just getting up and grabbing them myself, but a woman noticed my death stare and eventually brought them over to us. I liked our server. He was unique and VERY educated, VERY patient, and VERY passionate about Lolita and her menu… but that translated to lengthy explanations of ever. single. component.
2. Hungry
One of my biggest frustrations with Portland right now is that the culinary pendulum seems to be swinging in favor of small plates with big price tags. Because of that, my partner and I decided to split the food… HUGE mistake. We got a trio of insanely delicious cheeses ($ 13); unfortunately, they were the smallest portions of cheese at a restaurant I’ve ever seen, and they were accompanied by a suggestion of honey, and three very tiny bread slices. The server thoughtfully brought over more bread (and didn’t charge us), which I appreciated tremendously as I was ravenous. We also got the caponata ($ 4) which was made of squash and pine nuts. This tiny (three inches, maybe?) piece of covered bread was not enough for me, though. It was so incredibly flavorful that I could have easily eaten a lot more of it (but not for the price vs. quantity). And we finished with a trio of snacks ($ 10), including the burrata, sage fried almonds, and herbed olives. The burrata was small like the caponata was (barely more than a mouthful of food), but the almonds and olives were plentiful and delicious. If I came back, it would be for those two things (and for the cocktails, as both the negroni [and I loathe gin] and the champagne cocktail [which was refreshing, icy, and LOVELY] were delicious).
3. Vegetarian
The options here are just not enough for this to be a draw for me personally. One of the «mains» was raw veggies in an olive oil bath. I can’t pay $ 14 for something like that and see myself being at all satisfied.
Again — I think that this place is an excellent option for people who aren’t me. I’ve heard from friends that the wine here is amazing (I did glance through the wine list… WOW! Much to choose from!); also, the heartier portions of noodles with squid ink or bone marrow with pea shoots are being raved about throughout the city. I also adore the atmosphere. It’s perfect for my late-​night, needing-​to-​chill-​out mood; low lighting, the walls painted with hues of merlot; and, the house music my kind of tunes. I just can’t justify the price for portion for options.

I loved Lola. I think I will also love its little sister.
Lolita feels sophisticated, yet accessible. Lola was great for a fancy night out, with their prix fixe menus and themed nights. But Lolita feels a little more every day (ha, I wish).
I sat at the bar and enjoyed some cider on draft and some small plates. I got the burrata, the chicken liver mousse, and some olives and enjoyed chatting with the staff. The kitchen is spotless, as it should be since it’s brand new, but I have a feeling that’s just the type of ship that Guy and Stella run. It’s an open kitchen, but unlike its neighbor down the street, they have a SERIOUS industrial fan that allows patrons to leave not smelling like smoke/​food/​cooking oil.
I love the décor and they serve lunch AND dinner. I’m excited to keep going back…