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I’m not going to bury the lead: I love Marrickville Hardcourt Tennis Club. I love it for its schooners of Grifter Pale Ale on summer afternoons. I love that the members voted to ditch the pokies in April. I love that the clubhouse has been around for longer than colour television has existed in Australia, and I particularly love the Portuguese cooking at its restaurant, Casa do Benfica. There’s nothing quite like a Newtown Jets game followed by cheap wine and a caramel flan.

Before it set up shop at Marrickville Hardcourt in 2006, Casa Do Benfica was serving a Portuguese social club on the first floor of an industrial building in Sydenham. Support for Lisbon football team S.L. Benfica was strong at the club, hence the name, and why the current restaurant’s walls are adorned with framed soccer jerseys and vintage photographs of furrow-browed Primeira Liga players.

It’s a vibe that new places with names like “Chippendale Surf Club” or “Enmore Bingo Society” try desperately hard to recreate.

Book an evening court and table before most of the Inner West gets in first.

Every time I visit, whether it’s for beers and an embarrassing three-set loss, or the $35 bacalhau a lagareiro (pan-roasted cod and roast potatoes thoroughly coated in olive oil and garlic), I leave thinking, “Must return more often.”

Many times, I’m also left wondering, “What are they doing to make those mushrooms so bloody delicious?” If you’ve ever sat down to a bona fide Thanksgiving lunch, you might be reminded of North America’s favourite, green-bean casserole made with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. But deeper flavour is drawn upon here, balanced by an assertive thwack of chilli and the untamed taste of fresh spring onion. Terrific stuff for a dish modestly listed as “Garlic mushrooms, $27″.

Three women helm the kitchen and they’re all named Maria – head chef Maria Edith Ingles, who’s joined by Maria de Fatima Gomes Dos Santo and Maria de Andrade Araujo (who goes by “Gracas”).

If the hall-style dining room weren’t so packed with local families and Portuguese expats every time I’ve visited over the past decade, I might’ve asked them about the mushroom recipe or what’s going on with the espetada (barbecued beef skewer) that keeps the meat so tender.

Served swinging from a metre-tall tripod, each golf-ball-sized hunk of meat is keenly seasoned and a healthy purple-red inside. At $38 with McDonald’s-channelling chips and a decent garden salad on the side, it’s a reminder you can pay a lot more for a lot less elsewhere.

While drinks are order-at-the-bar, it’s table service for the food. Benfica first-timers may be presented with the menu and think, “Should’ve come with a larger group; this is an intimidating number of dishes,” but there are no rules regarding how to order (this is roll-your-sleeves-up family dining, not intricate dim sum).

I often build a meal around the $42 arroz de marisco, a rather wet (in a good, bisque-y way) seafood rice teeming with prawns, clams, mussels and crab. It’s a centrepiece to regularly return to between bites of other things.

Some of those things might be pipis in lemon and mustard butter. One or two weren’t wholly devoid of grit the other week, but the small vongole mountain is only $25; I can deal.

Clams also star in the carne de porco a alentejana ($32), a terracotta bowl rustling with crisp-fried cubes of potato, pickled carrot, pipis and wine-marinated pork. This is a mighty fine time with a bright, dry albarino from Muralhas de Moncao vineyards in Portugal’s Vinho Verde region, a deadset bargain for $35 a bottle.

A crisp Sagres lager ($9), imported from Portugal, is exactly what you want to drink with eight thumb-thick king prawns sauteed in garlic ($27), or the grilled octopus ($26), or a $22 serve of smoky, charred chourico (Portuguese chorizo), or a tripe and white bean stew ($28) from the specials board.

For the not-too-eggy, nicely jiggly caramel flan ($8), I’ve got to be honest: it’s hard to go past a $10 nip of Wild Turkey.

I also love the complimentary bread rolls, with their crusty tops and wispy interior. I love the extra-large, plastic Diet Coke can on the bar (“Lift ringpull for straws”) and that David Bowie is on regular rotation. I’ve got a lot of friends with kids who are pretty into the $4.50 Portuguese custard tarts.

Why am I telling you about all of this now? Because daylight saving starts in two weeks, and you might want to think about booking an evening court and table before most of the Inner West gets in first.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine