Portabello’s

We arrived n Christmas Day. Well the first positive was they were the only restaurant open on Christ as day. It is very pricey for a small town Italian Resturant. But the staff was friendly and the food is made to order. No premise paste sauce etc. it may have taken an extra few minutes but well worth the wait it was fresh and very tasteful. I am from Los Angeles and it had taste of a big city restaurant

Food was alright. Everything else was atrocious. When we entered with 8pm reservations on a Saturday night we could find no hostess, server, bartender, or bus boy to seat us. The paino player had to stop playing and go into the kitchen to find someone for us. That was just the beginning. 30 minutes to get drinks. 35 more minutes to get the food we ordered. The food was good and as well as the paino player. That was it for the positives. There was only 5 other tables in the place when we got there and they had already all eaten entrees. What was the hold up?!? We were the only table in the place when we asked for the bill and after 10 minutes we had to go to the bar and ask to pay there. Still had to wait for them to find the server.
Place was also dirty. Tables werent turned over. Used glasses were littered the bar and no one sat there as the owner puttered behind the bar. Our drinks sat there for at least 15 min. She didnt deliver them but made three trips to a different table with locals.
I couldn’t be more unimpressed.

My family owns a camp in the Fly Creek area, so I am sincerely surprised that I have not eaten here sooner. A couple of weeks ago on our way to our camp, my mother and I stopped by for my belated birthday dinner since I live out of state. Honestly, there were definitely some highs; but very few lows.
Food: We started with the Shrimp in a Sambuca Cream Sauce. This was amazing. One of the best things I have ever put in my mouth. Be forewarned though, it has a distinctly sweet flavor that could turn a lot of people off who are not expecting it. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it, but my mother highly recommended it. When I first put it in my mouth I was surprised by the flavor, but then impressed by how well nuanced the chef coaxed and combined the elegant flavors of the shrimp with his cream sauce. My only gripe is that there is an excessive amount of sauce on the plate which really downgrades the presentation a bit. I hope they take this as constructive criticism and make an alteration, because it is an amazing and unique offering.
In addition to our appetizer, we also received some grilled bread (pita bread, I think?), served with a pesto butter. Amazing! Extremely fresh and vibrant with excellent pairing-​flavor from a grilled bakery product. Very innovative, very unique, and very good.
For dinner I had the Duck Breast special with peaches in a marsala wine sauce. This was a little bit of a miss for me, but still very good. I was hoping for a little bit sweeter flavor in the sauce to imparted from the peaches. This was not the case though and the sauce was a lot more savory than I had anticipated. This didn’t make it bad by any stretch of the imagination; but I was looking forward to a fresh, crisp, and sweet peach undertone that I did not get.
My mother had the Pork in a brandy and brown sugar sauce that featured apples. Honestly, this was also a bit of a miss for her as she would have preferred smaller pork medallions compared to the much larger pork cuts presented. The flavor was still very good; but some slight alterations would take this dish to the next level.
All-​in-​all though, both of our meats and the vegetables were cooked perfectly.
Food ⁴⁄₅ (some slight alterations to the food would seriously elevate this to 5 star cuisine in my book.
Service: The service was incredibly sweet, professional and attentive. Though, it is hard not to be when we were the only table in the dining room through the first ²⁄₃ of our meal. Despite that though, I cannot take away from excellent and thoughtful service.
Service: ⁵⁄₅
Atmosphere: When you dine here, you are dining in a fine-​dining atmosphere. This means you should expect to wait for your food. For two people in an empty restaurant, our experience concluded after 1 hour and thirty minutes. This is perfectly fine with me because of how delicious everything was and how good the service was. This is what I would expect from a restaurant of this caliber. Fresh food, cooked to order, that takes time. Anyone looking for a quick bite to eat will not get it here, and should not expect it. Enjoy the company you are with, have a drink or two, and patiently await great food.
Extremely quaint; but a little lacking on cleanliness (cobwebs and dust).
Atmosphere: ⁴⁄₅ (–1 point for cobwebs and excessive dust on and in furnishings)
Price: For the price, I feel as if I received a comparable product. It is pricey, but the food speaks for itself. If some slight alterations were made to the food, I could see this ‘price’ category being a lot more favorable for Portabello’s.
Price: ³⁄₅
Final Thoughts: I was extremely pleasantly surprised by my first experience here. I will definitely be back to try something else in the near future. The braised short ribs caught my eye, and I have been thinking about them since. For some reason, I have a feeling that they will be particularly good here.

Ever walk into a place and it exudes the warmth of walking into an old friends home? That’s Portabello. As good as the food is (and the duck with blueberry and peach salsa will be a happy memory for a long time) what really truly makes this place is that it feels like home. The service is excellent and friendly, but casually dignified in a way that that some Michelin mentioned places 200 miles to the south miss completely.

I think the rest of these reviewers must work here because this was not a good place. First off the prices are fairly high, maybe not for New York City, but for a rural area such as this, yes. Then the service was extremely slow. I bet we were seated for a good 15 minutes before our drink order was even taken, and there were only 3 other tables of people in the place when we were seated. Once they got our drinks (well I never even got a cocktail I ordered, but I did get my water) they took our order. It took over 1 ½ hours from the time they took the order to the time we got the food. Again, the place was practically empty. Cook to order, fine, but having time to raise the food, harvest the food, then cook it is a bit excessive. Once the food finally came the proportions were huge, but the food was only average at best, except for the stuffed chicken my wife got, that was exceptionally good. I know I will never be back, there are too many other good places around Cooperstown to go. Do yourself a favor, if someone recommends this place, don’t listen, but if for some reason you do go order the stuffed chicken and be prepared to wait a long, long time.

What a great family restaurant. We just ate there on Easter Sunday April 20, 2014. The service was great along with the food. They had a butter pesto for your bread to die for. My wife is a vegetarian and they made a meat free dish so she could eat something… I had the salmon and it was cook perfect. would return again if in Fly Creek, NY

Thanks Elizabeth for a nice, relaxing evening. I’m still in a Peanut butter pie coma!
Our dinner was excellent, just seemed a little overpriced.

Dining in this restaurant is a MUST. They say you have to kiss many frogs to finally meet your prince. So to save you kissing many frogs, I will tell you my experience here so you can simply go straight to your prince. This was my first time visiting Cooperstown and Fly Creek. Finding great food is difficult in this area. However, once I found Portabello’s I decided that money is only well spent here. My first day, I had beer battered shrimp po’boy with a Cajun aioli, with a caesar salad on the side instead of fries (trying to be a bit healthy). It was sooooooo good I had to come back for dinner. For dinner, I ordered the chicken fettuccine with exotic wild mushrooms. Before my meal was ready (since everything is made to order and is absolutely fresh) the wonderful waitress brought out some freshly made grilled pizza dough with pesto butter. I have never had pesto butter before… so…I devoured all of it on my own. When the meal was brought out, it was beautifully arrayed and my first bite was by far the most amazing array of flavors.
(Side story: Two weeks prior I was in Italy as a graduation trip, and I dined at Trattoria de Fiore in Venice near Piazza San Marco, and was thoroughly disappointed in their chicken fettuccine… so Portabello’s really redeemed my horrible experience in Venice)
The next day before I headed back to New York City, I decided to have my afternoon meal here. I ordered an appetizer sampler (which came with fried calamari with homemade marinara, homemade meatballs, crab cake, and fresh mozzarella). With my meal I had the «apples and oranges» drink which was also amazing.
What makes this place really special (in addition to the food) is the service. From the moment you walk in, the owner greets you and makes the environment very comfortable– she makes you feel at home. The waitress I had was VERY kind, attentive and effective. Also, at some point I saw the Chef actually come out and talk to the people. Now I dine often throughout Manhattan, and I have NEVER witnessed the chef come out and make sure everyone was happy with their meals. Needless to say, this place is a gem.
Finally, the prices are very affordable. What else can you ask for?

Before I go into what I wasn’t impressed with, I will start with what I was impressed with…
Staff was very accommodating and friendly. Didn’t seem to be any vegetarian dishes on the menu so we inquired about removing the meat on some dished was possible. They didn’t even hesitate to prepare something any way we liked it. Nothing was a problem and our waiter was extremely nice.
The atmosphere…
Very small town restaurant feel, but conducted theirselves as a high end Italian bistro? It was very interesting. I couldn’t quite grasp it. Seems like they are suffering a bit of an identity crisis.
The food…
Well the food seems to match the small town restaurant rather then the high end bistro vibe. Problem is, they seem to put a bit of the hi end prices on the meals.
Seems like they have good intentions here, but I feel like the chef needs to go out and explore some other restaurants that might meet the same criteria of what they are trying to achieve. Just seems like they have an idea of what they want to portray theirselves as but oblivious to their almost diner caliber meals. Go and explore the world of dining a bit and you might be able to step it up a notch and become a well known spot in that area.

First of all, the preceding reviewer is correct: Portabello’s is NOT where your GPS says it is. Th restaurant is actually located at the intersection of SR ²⁸⁄₈₀ and Co. Rd. 26, right where the blinking yellow light is in the center of Fly Creek.
You gotta love a restaurant where the waitress and head chief are the co-​owners, as was the case when we visited. The service was friendly and relaxed, and the food was excellent. i especially liked the Portabello mushroom appetizer (no surprise, guess) and my wife’s Veal Margherita.

First tip: Your GPS might direct you to an empty spot on the highway outside town — Keep driving into Fly Creek and the restaurant is beside a blinking street light. This was explained to us by the restaurant as «The street numbers don’t really work around here.»
The food here was delicious (the pork chop with gorgonzola and apples was a huge hit with my wife) and mixed drinks damned tasty, and the service great, except for a couple of oddities:
1) The bread rolls that were originally served to us were warm and crispy on the outside, but still frozen inside.
2) The «medium rare» filet mignon was considerably rarer than I’d expected medium rare to be, but that was fine with me as I like my meat bloody.