Hortas ready to compete on national stage after being named SA’s best seafood restaurant
FILIPE Horta’s Port Noarlunga eatery is vying to be named the nation’s best seafood restaurant, after winning the title at the SA Restaurant and Catering Awards in July.
MEMORIES of watching the sun set over Portugal’s coastline as a child inspired Filipe Horta’s award-winning restaurant at Port Noarlunga.
Mr Horta, who moved to Australia 30 years ago, opened Hortas on Saltfleet St in 1997, after managing a restaurant in Leigh St in the city.
He says he wanted his own restaurant to evoke the philosophy of “simple, fresh food” found at his old home town – a small fishing village in the south of Portugal.
A further ambition was to see it recognised as one of SA’s best fine-dining options.
That aim has been achieved with Hortas named Best Seafood Restaurant at the SA Restaurant and Catering Awards in July.
The judges were won over by chef Geoff Skelton’s signature cataplana – a seafood stew with flavours of onion, garlic and paprika – and a share platter fresh from the ocean.
Hortas will now represent SA at the national awards, in Victoria this October.
Mr Horta said the award was an “honour” that recognised the restaurant’s proud approach to offering customers the best of SA with a Portuguese twist.
“We think it’s important to use local produce as much as possible – and why not, when you’re in a location like this,” he says, scanning the south’s pristine coastline.
“Where I come from, we don’t like to waste any of the product. We dig in.”
Tables at Hortas are covered in paper tablecloths, in the expectation diners will make a mess, as they tuck into seafood fresh from the ocean.
“When I came to Australia going back 30 years ago, people used to have fillets – fillets of fish, that was it,” Mr Horta says.
“Now people aren’t surprised to see an entire fish served in front of them.
“We can do flounder on the bone, mud crabs, whole king prawns.”
Chef Geoff Skelton, who has been creating dishes at Hortas for more than four years, believes it was the Portuguese character of its meals that saw it named the state’s best.
“Everybody can do shorthead (fish) but no one else in South Australia seems to be offering a Portuguese take,” Mr Skelton says.
“This is something we’ve been working towards and I’m ecstatic – it’s a special little place.”