My bf found this seafood restaurant ranked pretty highly Tripadvisor. As it was just around the…read morecorner from our hotel, we decided to check it out for dinner.
The restaurant was quite busy on a Sunday night, but we got seated inside immediately. Unfortunately, we were seated next to the wall with my chair right next to the entrance to the bathroom, and people kept hitting the back of my chair as they were passing by.
We were quite excited as we saw lots of fresh seafood on display all around us. The menu had pictures of various different kinds of platters, so we could just look at the photos and pick our meal.
Unfortunately, there were so many options to choose from that it was quite overwhelming. We finally decided on shellfish and fish cream soup (€2.50) and the Misto de Marisco for 2 people (€33), which consisted of lagostins (crayfish) and lavagante (lobster).
Covert was on the table, and you only pay for what you consume. It consisted of bread (€1.50), butter (€1.50), Azeitão sheep cheese (€3), and sardine pate (€1.50).
The bread wasn't so good. Kind of dry and a bit stale, and I noticed some flies buzzing around.
My bf was eyeing the cheese, and we couldn't decide whether we should try it or not. Well, as we were only in Portugal once, perhaps this would be our only chance to try the local cheese. So I ripped off the wrapper and cut a wedge out of the cheese. Immediately, we regretted our decision. The most foul odor emerged from the cheese, as the gooey insides ran out all over the plate. Ughh... the smell!
Since that was already €3 down the drain, I smeared some of the goo on a piece of bread and tried to choke it down. Ugh, not our cup of tea. When the waiter came by, we asked him to please remove the plate of barely-touched cheese, and he looked a bit surprised.
The soup was quite disappointing. It was just a plate of salty brown goo topped with a translucent whitish blob of more goo. Whatever seafood was in there seemed overpowered by a bunch of thickening starch or whatever it was.
The seafood itself was better than the other stuff. Not the best I've ever had, but the lobster meat was sweet, and the crayfish (which I thought were shrimp at first) were okay. It was served with mayo and lemon wedges. My bf thought mayo was a weird condiment and didn't touch it, but I tried it and thought it went well together.
It was a lot of work to dig the meat out of the shell, and after a while, my bf gave up and said he was done with the meal.
Overall it was okay but not the best seafood dinner I've ever had, so I was a bit disappointed.