It's better than it looks on the outside. Casa Verde doesn't look like much from the outside. It's definitely green, as the name says in Portuguese, but it gives off a vibe of mould green, influenced by the tatty industrial street it's on just west of Commercial. Inside it's nicer, homey like a down-home restaurant in the Douro. The food tastes OK in a rustic way too. It put me in mind of a Portuguese version of places I've eaten in in France and Italy where the local truckers and farmers go, but not the tourists (except me.)

I started with Casa Verde's take on soup made with kale leaves. Kale is a Portuguese culinary staple for soups. "Souple"? Theirs was a simple potato broth-y affair with strips of kale leaves. The few thin slices of sausage in the bottom (NOT chorizo, sigh...) didn't add much to the flavour. But it was nice in a sorta country way.

Since I was there on Sunday, I decided to try their weekend-only special, the grilled piri-piri chicken. It cost $13 for a half-chicken, some fried potatoes and a simple green salad. The chicken had a good crispy skin, studded with peppery Portuguese spices. It was hot, but not mouth-rippingly so. Be sure to ask for a bottles of ketchup and piri-piri sauce and mix 'em together for the fries, because they can use some help. The beer was cheap -- $4.75 for a pint from a microbrewery out Kelowna way. Casa Verde isn't as good as Bairrada in Toronto's Portugal Village, but it's better than Nando's. I think. I've never been to Nando's. And I think I'll keep it that way.