Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
type of mushroom, by 1986, no agreed-upon theory accounts for the name, which seems to be a marketing coinage. London's Portobello Road (one suggested source of the mushroom name) originally was the lane to Porto Bello House, named for the Panamanian place captured by the British under Vernon in 1739.
Wiktionary
alt. The large, mature form of the crimini mushroom n. The large, mature form of the crimini mushroom
Wikipedia
Portobello or Porto Bello may refer to:
Portobello is a novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, published in 2008. It is set in and around the Portobello Road in Notting Hill, London. Written in the third-person narrative mode, it follows the lives of a number of Londoners—rich and poor alike—living near the Portobello Road Market whose paths cross by accident rather than design. In other words, Portobello is about "the destinies of an oddly assorted group of people, whose only common characteristic is their postcode."
Throughout the novel, something menacing seems to lurk behind every street corner, and the suspicion that something awful or sinister is going to happen any minute "(this is after all a novel by Ruth Rendell) is what hooks the reader" As "one of the leading chroniclers of contemporary London", Rendell has known the area and its inhabitants for so long that her "take on Notting Hill restores some of the rawness taken away by gentrification and the saccharine stammer of the film of the same name."
Usage examples of "portobello".
We discovered that we had loads in common and like me, he knows all the famous designers and places to get offcuts of fabric, and often goes down to Portobello to trawl round the vintage clothes shops.
At this reminder of food Nina glanced behind the bamboo screen into the minute kitchen and, for what must have been the tenth time this evening, counted on her fingers for reassurance: the wine-she needed to buy a book and learn something about wines-a white, to accompany the blackened fish, Portobello mushrooms, a platter of broiled vegetables, salad with sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese, and for dessert, a tarte tatin, with cappuccino or espresso, whichever Keith might prefer.
The Whippet was delivered to Portobello Barracks in Dublin, but within a matter of days was sent to Limerick on a training and reconnaissance mission.
She followed Portobello to its northernmost point, past a few sad-looking stands selling what looked to her like stuff that even the least choosy of bag ladies would be embarrassed to possess, past a vegetarian restaurant with a queue outside, past record shops with Rasta colors in the windows, past a falafel restaurant, under a bridge, and past a bustling market square filled with yet more painfully trendy people.
It was sent by ship to Panama City, then moved on slave, mule and burro-back to Portobello on the Caribbean.
Now, at fifty-five, he might be mistaken for a prizefighter who stayed in the sport too long: cauliflower ears, portobello nose, the humility of a basically sweet palooka who has learned the hard way that brute strength does not a champion make.
He was scraping the glue away from a broken Chinese blue-and-white bowl he'd bought in the Portobello Road, and repaired, two fiendishly excited horsemen chasing a timid little fallow-deer.
Any one of them might show up at the entrance to the camp at Portobello with a job application.
There was plenty to occupy him before the Saturday Night Special, since he hadn't even checked his mail after reading the note under his door, when he returned from Portobello.
Keith earned three times as much as the PrimeMinister and never had any money, losing heavily every day atMecca, the turf accountants on the Portobello Road.