Adega

The tasting menu on Alum Rock Avenue runs on salt cod, octopus and lupini beans, and the cellar behind it holds 500 Portuguese wines.

Why go

Carlos and Fernanda Carreira opened this in December 2015 in Little Portugal, and ten months later it took San Jose's first Michelin star. Their daughter Jessica Carreira runs the pastry and her fiance David Costa runs the kitchen. Carolyn Jung ate there two days after the announcement and found bread baked daily for a 66-seat room.3 The house writes its own brief the same way: a menu using staple Portuguese ingredients such as olive oil, lupini beans, sardines, octopus and salted codfish, and 500 rare Portuguese wines to pour beside it.1

Then they closed it. In December 2023 the family shut the dining room to put a second Petiscos in it, and by October 2024 they had changed their minds.2 It reopened on 15 November 2024 at the same address. The star did not come back with it, and Carreira is direct about not chasing it.

Order this / avoid

Order: the tasting menu. It is the only format, and the wine goes with it at three levels: regular, premium and reserve.1
Order: a bottle off the list if you want to dig past the pairing. The cellar runs past 500 labels.1
Avoid: bringing wine casually. Three bottles maximum and $99 corkage on each 750ml.1
Avoid: booking on a severe allergy. The kitchen states it cannot accommodate gluten, soy, nut, shellfish, dairy or meat allergies, and wants 48 hours on anything it can.1

What locals & experts say

Food Gal, Carolyn Jung, November 2016: Don't come expecting fancy, overly stylized, tweezer food. They don't even cook sous vide here, preferring to use time-honored techniques instead.3 That was written nine years ago and nobody with a byline has reviewed the room since it came back.
Carlos Carreira, co-owner, to the Chronicle: We were surprisingly overwhelmed by people telling us to reopen. They missed a fine dining experience in San Jose.2
Carlos Carreira on the star: It's not about Michelin, even though we respect them and love them. That is not the goal for this comeback.2

Good to know

Michelin: no current standing. The guide's own page for Adega returns Restaurant not found, read 28 August 2026.4
Booking: reservations are required.1
Same family: they also run Petiscos, the Portuguese tapas bar downtown, and the bakery Pastelaria Adega.2
Where: between 33rd and 34th on Alum Rock Avenue.1

Verdict

should-visit — The accolade history is louder than the evidence under it. Carolyn Jung is the only writer who has published a judgment on these plates and she ate here in 2016, so a reader is leaning on a nine-year-old palate and on what the family says it cooks. Against that, the Carreiras shut this room for eleven months and reopened it because customers asked, which is a harder signal than a review: people came back. That buys the rung, and one current byline settles whether it clears the next one.