Our Philosophy
Our Philosophy
We believe it’s the simple things that make life great. Good friends and great food. A sunny afternoon listening to tunes, or knocking back the iconic Bondi Burger at your local beach. That's all you really need in life.
And it’s why founder Antonio Cerqueira first started serving up delicious Portuguese style flame grilled chicken and his original chilli sauce back in 1986 from a small chicken shop in North Bondi. He knew that when you’ve got the beach, friends and great food then life tastes pretty good.
All our chicken is flame-grilled (never fried), fresh (never frozen) and 100% Australian and RSPCA Approved. It’s no wonder that every bite of our Portuguese style chicken is so fresh tasting & flavour filled.
The Story of Oporto
If you were to ask 10-year-old Antonio, our Oporto founder his deepest aspirations, he would have said, “have my own restaurant”. An unusual response from a Portuguese country boy. He would fulfil this dream 15 years later when he landed in his new home, Bondi Beach, Australia.
Antonio introduced Bondi to an unpretentious new style of food, with fresh, fiery and intense flavours of citrus, garlic and chilli. He cooked his chicken using his traditional Portuguese charcoal method ‘Churrasco’. Australia loved a barbie, but they’d never had it this way.
Oporto was born but it wasn’t an overnight success. Amongst his first loyal customers were the Bondi lifeguards and it was the lifeguards and surfing locals who inspired and co-created the Bondi Burger, which you could eat in one hand while holding a surfboard in the other.
Oporto has never been fast food, it’s slow food, served fast. The flame grilled chicken and legendary sauce would become as iconic as Bondi Beach itself.
