‘Portu-Goan’ Pork Vindaloo

Pork braised in chilli, vinegar & tomato — the original recipe

from the kitchen

Vindaloo did not begin as a test of nerve. It began as vinha d’alhos — Portuguese for wine and garlic — a sailor’s method for keeping meat edible on a long voyage. Pack pork in wine vinegar and garlic, and the acid does the preserving for you.

It came ashore in Goa with Portuguese ships in the sixteenth century, met Goan cooks, palm vinegar and Kashmiri chillies, and turned into something the sailors would not have recognised. The ‘aloo’ on the end has nothing to do with potatoes, whatever a hundred menus in Britain would have you believe. It is the tail of alhos. Garlic.

Ours follows the original. Pork is braised long and slow in chilli, vinegar and tomato until the vinegar stops being sharp and turns into depth. It is sour before it is hot, which is the part that got lost somewhere on the way to the curry house.

If your last vindaloo came from a British curry house, it was most likely a lamb curry with extra chilli and nothing else to say for itself — a 1970s invention aimed at a dare rather than a dinner. This is the dish as it was before the dare: pork, vinegar, garlic, and heat that arrives as part of the flavour instead of in place of it. People come looking for the spiciest Indian food in New York and leave having tasted something rather than merely survived it.

It is also the hottest thing we cook. If someone at the table is chasing heat, this is where to point them, and the kitchen will take it further on request — most dishes here can be made milder or hotter to taste, and this one has the most room at the top. It came off the menu once. It came back because people kept asking, which is the only good reason to bring a dish back.

Dietary & spice

It carries no major allergens — no dairy, no gluten, no nuts. On halal: our chicken and lamb are halal. The menu now also includes pork dishes — notably this one — so the kitchen is not fully halal. If you keep strict halal, tell your server and we’ll guide you through the menu; there are also plenty of vegetarian dishes. The allergy menu lists every dish and what it carries.

‘Portu-Goan’ Pork Vindaloo.