We went here based on all of the positive reviews, despite my wife not wanting a buffet.
The staff were very friendly and the place was quite busy but not totally packed.
There was an extensive selection of traditional dishes to choose from and we dug right in.
Fried shrimp, shrimp lo mein, skewered fried prawns, baby clams, steamed dumplings, chicken wings, soup (not sure what not won ton more like a mix between egg drop and hot and sour). Some dishes looked better than others but most looked pretty good.
My wife opted for several rice dishes, along with a few selections of Sushi as she didn't want all that fried food.
As soon as we sat to eat, she pointed out that EVERYTHING was either barely warm, room temperature or slightly cold. I mean EVERYTHING.
It was very strange. I went back to the buffet and the trays were steaming but the food was not. I tried different dishes from the first round and those were the same result.
What made this really weird to me is the place was quite full and NOBODY seemed to mind or find this strange.
The saddest appetizers were the egg rolls. Greasy, over fried and not appealing at all. Tried the spring rolls instead and they were pretty empty and tasteless. The soup had cilantro in it. That was different but it wasn't that bad. My wife hated it, said hers tasted like soap. Typical for some people and cilantro but she never noticed that eating Mexican food with lots of cilantro.
The worst was that nothing stood out or tasted fresh at all. Overall the flavors were not bad but mostly everything seemed to have been cooked days ago. When you add lukewarm or cold to that, the meal becomes nearly inedible.
Initially, we were a bit worried we would get sick later but the food turned over very quickly. The only thing we could figure was everything was just coming out of the fridge precooked and cold.
It is our first time in Portugal and we had a hard enough time trying to get our waitress to understand our drink order on first sitting down so I did not bother to ask or inform them about our confusion over the state of the food.
We were so disappointed we didn't even bother with the dessert. Really, who wants to walk away from ice cream? Too sad. It was only about 8pm when we went so perhaps it all warmed up at some point, but we'll never know. Better luck to the next adventurer looking to eat inexpensively in Lisbon with a craving for Chinese food. read more