And thus, in no particular order, while trying to work my way through the large number of places I…read morewent, and wrote review drafts for, on our trip to Portugal a couple months ago... I get to by far the worst restaurant I've been to in a while, at least in a case where I was certainly expecting the opposite, and one of the worst reviews I've written in a long time. I have no idea what entirely different-sounding restaurant most of these people went to... it started out badly, when we got there, the first ones after they opened, for our reservation, the music was quite loud, so after being seated, we asked our server if she could turn it down, and she gave her an irritated look and stomped off. We think she turned it down a tiny bit for a couple minutes, then turned it back up even louder. My wife literally said (I was facing the other direction) that she saw that waitress trying to talk to another waiter and having a hard time due to the music volume. Wasn't quite the right vibe for 12:30 for lunch, was a bit more of a late evening bar vibe, music-wise? But also yeah, our waitress had a bit of an attitude.
We talked about just walking out and going somewhere else, which I wish I had, but I'd seen so many great reviews, and we had a reservation, so we ordered a couple things, which did arrive pretty quickly there after. We tried, at the time (though I get the impression the menu probably also rotates pretty often)
Potato cabbage chorizo balls - super bland, they just tasted like shaped balls of mashed potato. Didn't taste any chorizo or even cabbage, really. Boring.
Squid - the worst squid I'd had in a while. The sauce was tasty enough but nothing amazing; the squid itself was way over-cooked, also, over-*grilled* specifically, it tasted charred. I still ate it, but it definitely wasn't worth 16 euros.
A "pickled rabbit/quince/chorizo", because I was just so curious what it was. This one was actually super fun, unique and interesting, saving the restaurant as a whole from only getting one star. I was surprised after the other two. I've definitely never had anything like it before, and likely never will. There were a whole bunch of flavors, all great. But their menu is a chalk-board, so I have no idea if it's still being served, or if it disappeared from the menu a week after I was there in January.
Their wine is also very much... American priced. If it were in Long Beach, 9 euro (or its American equivalent) for a glass of the house wine would seem very reasonable, and if it were in Los Angeles, it'd be downright cheap - in Portugal, though, I'd gotten used to much cheaper glasses of wine, so that was a bit surprising. I did like that they had a by-the-glass orange wine, though, so obviously I had a glass of the house orange wine. It was pretty decent. I'd have been happy for a red or white wine for half the price, though, as seemed common for similar restaurants nearby. That wouldn't have mattered so much if the food had been, overall, better, though, and the service hadn't been... a little snotty.
