You looked up the restaurant, spent time going over the menu, reading reviews, seeing pictures of it online which lead you to make a reservation.
The 5 of you, 4 of which have relied on you to make a great choice that works out for everyone are all excited to check this place out.
You arrive at the restaurant kinda expecting a half decent space that will have the heavenly aromas coming through some exhaust and onto the street where your Uber drops you.
That doesn't quite happen. In fact, while your eyes are seeing the name of the restaurant clear as day, the logical part of your mind is messing with your head as this can't be the place.
As you enter the space with the group, you right away 'Hope' for the best. Pray the food is half as decent as the reviews claim. Even if maybe the reviews are all fake, you Hope all will go well.
Folks, I cannot describe to you what an amazing experience this place was and the food was truly EXCEPTIONAL.
Making it heavenly was the person running our show, Anil. A native of Nepal who has been at this restaurant for many years now, he is an EXCEPTIONAL person in the restaurant industry. Very candid and clever yet extremely passionate about the food they serve.
As we start ordering things as all the 5 sets of eyeballs are hungrier than our stomachs, Anil puts a pause to the order and makes recommendations clearly letting us know he has no intention of having us over order as he needs us to try the best in each genre of foods and that just won't be possible as we will have our bellies too full.
You all know I am a samosa snob. My folks from South Asia; the samosas are not the Punjabi samosas but the patti samosas (which are actually the first kinds of samosas I was ever exposed to as a kid thanks to my amazing Mom who still makes the best ones).
The samosas here in my opinion are one of the TOP 5 I have ever tried in any restaurant and the BEST Patti samosa Ive ever tried in any restaurant.
The casing was was thin yet crispy and was able to easily hold its own. The filling was TO DIE FOR. It had your regular potatoes, etc but also had a decent amount of veggies. If I could, I would probably eat 25 of these for a meal.
We also ordered the prawn pakoras since we are in Portugal so yes, gotta try the seafood. Never have had the prawn/shrimp pakoras before so I have nothing to compare these to. All I can say is, they were amazing. Pretty large and still moist on the inside.
We also orders the lamb stupa special. Anil said we would have never had this in our lives as this was an in-house creation. OMG, why are these folks not in the news guys!!!!! The lamb was cooked beautifully. The flavor was tantalizing. Heavy usage of mint which gave the green color. Lamb cooked to perfection, soft and moist. By all means, this was something very unique.
We orders the prawn thupka which I believe is a traditional Nepalese dish. Again, no skimping on the shrimps and the flavor was like magic in your mouth. You had one, then you wanted another. And then another.
Of course since this is a Nepalese place, we had to order their momos. I haven't really had a lot of momos in my life but will say, of the 10 pieces that came, I had 3 so someone allowed me to have one extra.
Since I was on a holiday so I tend to be the meat eater, I didn't try any of the vegetarian dishes myself however, the folks that did truly enjoyed it.
We finished off with gulab jamun. I think that was the only part of the entire meal that was underwhelming. Had way better gulab jamuns at many other places so this wasn't the best.
That said, this is not a one and one trip to Portugal for me as there is so much to see. I will definitely be visiting Anil at Rose Stupa again. read more
