My boyfriend and I had a pretty terrible experience here, mainly because of the service. Came in on a Friday night, and waited about 15-20 minutes for a table as a line formed behind us. That was expected--it's a small place, and they were full. Only, no one greeted us, or even matched our eyes. They had cleared out 3 tables in the meantime. I finally approached one of the waiters, who said that they could seat us "in a minute." About 5 minutes later, we were seated.
The waiter took our order shortly after that: we wanted to split a bottle of wine, cabbage soup, charcuterie, Portuguese steak & fries, and grilled sardines. The waiter asked "do you want bread, too?" I assumed that would have come with the charcuterie, but of course--yes, please! The first course arrived fairly swiftly: the wine, soup, and charcuterie board. No bread, though. I assumed our waiter would be returning with a basket, but nope. As with our arrival, it became impossible to make eye contact with any of the servers (many of whom were serving bread to other tables). In fact, it seemed like our server had disappeared, and now there were only two for the entire restaurant. The charcuterie was mediocre. The soup was good, but nothing too special.
We waited for another 30 minutes after finishing our first course before we figured they had forgotten about us. I flagged down another server (which took another 10 minutes). "Is our food still coming?" I asked not-our server. "Yes," he said blankly. 5 minutes later, he returns with the steak, and then the sardines 5 minutes after that. Still no bread, so I said to him, "We ordered bread." "Bread?" "Yes...." He walks away. Guess what? We never got the bread.
The steak was pretty terrible -- thin and chewy, fried egg unceremoniously thrown on top. The fries were good. The sardines were sardines... not seasoned or presented especially nicely. We couldn't wait to leave after finishing our meal. We walk up to the register, and a few minutes later, we are greeted by... our server! Way to come back at the very end, buddy.
He charged us for the bread :(
These were the worst tapas we had in Lisbon. I'd even say we've had better in the U.S. Only come here if you're a sucker for waiters walking around with flaming sausages, like it's a damn TGI Fridays. read more