Bar Douro is opening its third restaurant this October, on the exact Soho street where its founder first started pouring Portuguese wine over a decade ago.
Ten years ago, Max Graham spent eight months running a pop-up Port house on Greek Street, trying to convince Londoners that Portugal was one of Europe’s most exciting food and wine cultures.
Three years later, he opened the original Bar Douro in a railway arch by London Bridge. This October, in Bar Douro’s tenth anniversary year, he’s bringing the whole thing back to where it started, taking over 10 Greek Street for the group’s third site.
“Soho is where the dream started, and now we’re bringing everything we’ve learnt over the last decade back to where it all began,” Graham says of the opening.
A UK first for a very rare breed
It’s not just a sentimental return. Bar Douro Soho will become the first restaurant in the UK to import and serve Maronesa vaca velha beef, a genuinely rare find even in Portugal.
The Maronesa is a primitive, mountain-bred cattle breed from the remote Trás-os-Montes region, so far removed from typical modern cattle that it’s said to closely resemble the aurochs, the extinct wild ox that all domestic cattle descend from. Protected by PDO status and rarely seen beyond the Iberian Peninsula, its long working life gives the meat exceptional depth of flavour and ivory marbling.
In Soho, it’ll headline a grilled vaca velha ribeye on the bone.
What’s on the menu
Executive chef Neuza Leal is overseeing a menu that balances Bar Douro regulars, croquetes de alheira, bacalhau à brás, gambas à guilho and acorn-fed black pig secretos, with new dishes created specifically for the Soho site.
All of it is built around a decade of relationships with Portuguese farmers, fishermen and winemakers. The wine list leans into that same philosophy: native grape varieties and heritage winemaking from producers including Hugo Mendes, António Picotes and Quinta das Bágeiras, alongside Ports from Churchill’s, the family business founded by Graham’s father John in 1981, and the reason Graham grew up around the Douro Valley in the first place.
The space
Expect counter dining around an open kitchen, an azulejo-tiled dining room, and a dedicated cellar room set aside for producer dinners and intimate tastings.
It’s a further step up from the group’s London Bridge original and its second site, Bar Douro City, at Finsbury Avenue Square.
The London x London Take: the full-circle framing is the real story here, a founder returning to the street he started on, a decade and two restaurants later. The Maronesa beef is the proof it wasn’t a one-off, a restaurant still finding new Portuguese producers nobody else in the UK has bothered to track down, ten years in.
Need to know
- Where: 10 Greek Street, Soho, London W1D 4DH
- When: Opens October 2026
- Booking: Reservations open late August 2026, via bardouro.co.uk
