When you see a restaurant with a five star review on TripAdvisor you instantly assume you're in for a treat but in the case of Ícone Gastrorock experience this couldn't be further away from the truth.
When you first arrive there you'll notice the restaurant is completely empty, except for one of the chefs that's drinking beer while sitting by the counter so you think you've arrived too early but then you check your phone and it's 20:30 on a Friday and the neighbouring restaurants are packed. That right there, my friend, should be your first warning to run away from there as soon as possible. If, like me, you read they are famous for they "ceviche", then consider this your second warning: if you as a chef are going to serve raw food then it's common knowledge to serve it as fresh as possible and not a pice of Thai tuna that has been thawed out and frozen again that it has completely lost it's muscular fibres and now resembles a piece of cardboard, but hey that should be the silver lining here as it at least would have some bite to it and not be the complete mush it was. FYI that wasn't even citrus cured fish, he simply squeezed a lime on top of it and added some overwhelmingly sweet su sauce. On this fresh raw food topic I would like to add a note on the Steak Tartare that my wife ordered ( spelled Tartar on the menu), why on earth would you serve still frozen filet mignon with a side of stale crips that the chef claimed it was house made but was clearly possible to see him reaching for it in a bag next to the spices?
This far into dinner I was ready to order the check and leave but my wife was still hungry ( as she could not eat her so called steak tartare) and convinced me to stay and order a main dish, with much disgust I accepted. Rib eye steak with baked potato and filet mignon with mushroom risotto were our unfortunate choices, I ordered it rare and was presented with a medium well steak and a potato that was first boiled, then fried to poorly emulate a baked potato skin and finally flash baked to melt the unseasoned blend of cheeses, by the way what they sell as "queijo meia cura" is actually "minas padrão" the filet mignon was ordered blue but came well done and the risotto was uncooked, no not al dente, plain uncooked and with a disgusting dose of cream and mascarpone to make it inedible and the mushrooms being cooked in wasabi, sake and soy sauce, unnervingly disgusting.
The wine list proved to be incredibly limited with the chef saying it was organic wine so it contained no sulphites, here's a quick wine lesson for you, all wines contain sulphites as a result of the production method and keeping procedures what most organic wines differentiate in is that they contain no ADDED sulphites.
Don't be fooled by the chefs talk that they buy everything fresh everyday when their menu is comprised of mostly frozen itens.
When the chefs are finished with When the chefs are finished with your order they go indulge themselves with more beer and cigarettes, that all right in front of you.
All in all, this has been the worst restaurant experience I've had in the past 12 years. I will never return to this place again and will vehemently advise against people going there.
Food sanitation authorities should make a visit to this place and see what kind of expired food they're keeping in the freezer and fridges, as something clearly didn't smell right there.
What a joke of a place. read more