From my one experience here ordering the meal Completo, my impression was that this is your place if you can tolerate quantity over quality. The dining space consists of a small indoors and a decent sized outdoors patio. My waitress was not exceptionally friendly when I tried to order in Portugese and when I asked for clarification in English she didn't try to help. The Completo meal itself was very massive and came in several installments.
They started off with the drinks, freshly squeezed orange juice and a cafe con leiche (basically a latte), both were delicious but came too early. Next came the scrambled eggs which were consumable on its own but was rather bland and no salt nor pepper were available on the table. They then brought out the cold cuts, cheese and jam without the bread basket for several minutes so I sat there thinking if I should just start eating each individually and cut my losses.
However, when the bread basket came, oh was it glorious!! As mentioned in my picture, it included several cut sourdoughs, plain bread and whole wheat, as well as a fresh butter croissant and a few pão de quiejos. They were all warm to the touch and crispy, which makes me think (or at least hope) they were made semi fresh. The jam, cheese and cold cuts they provided were plentiful to create several sweet and/or savory mini sandwiches to devour. I loved this basket and emptied it promptly; it was the highlight of my meal and definitely not to be missed when visiting.
I had recently travelled to Portugal so I had to try this cafe's pasteis de nata and boy did it resemble the freshly baked Pasteis de Belem in Lisboa. Like the bread basket, it was warm and crispy. Would HIGHLY recommend passerbys to try this!
All in all, this was a mediocre dining experience with an INCREDIBLE bread basket and pasteis de nata (let that be the positive takeaway). If you're hungry, this is the place to be for its copious meals, otherwise you can probably find better quality in the various cafes across Ipanema. read more