ALBERGUE 1601 — Restaurant in São Lázaro

TL;DR: Superb food undermined by unexpectedly poor service (many amateur mistakes).

The grilled sardines were perfectly cooked and moist. The Piri Piri had a great texture -- crispy skin and succulent meat. The seafood rice stew came with the smell of the sea and topped with fresh high-quality ingredients.

Unfortunately, the concerning issues began at the door. As walk-in guests, we were asked to write down our contact info (name and phone number) before being seated, a rather unnecessary collection of personal data considering there was no queue. After writing the information down and directly taken to our table on the second floor, the complimentary ciabatta was cold, and the olive oil bottle was unpleasantly oily (both the stopper and the bottle).

The beverage service was particularly disappointing. When ordering wine by the glass, the server poured a small amount for tasting and then proceeded to deduct some amount from the final pour, resulting in a noticeably short final pour as shown in the picture. The amount deducted was likely more than the tasted amount :/ For a restaurant with significant markups on its wine, this practice feels incredibly cheap. Also, our empty glasses were never cleared (but the server came to ask whether I’d like another glass). Furthermore, the service team never helped with pouring our sparkling water. Note that the still/sparkling water costed 38 MOP per bottle (with no filtered/tap water option).

Midway through the meal, a server thoughtfully offered to change my plate, only to take the used one and left me waiting without a plate for several minutes. This interruption broke the flow of what should have been an...

I went a while back and got bad memories just looking back at the photos. This place has a pretentious aura about it. The first time we came by, it was just to try our luck. Obviously we knew they're pretty popular and are usually fully booked so we didn't expect much, but the receptionist's attitude felt a bit judgemental. Still, everyone raves about this restaurant, so I took it upon myself to get a booking on my next family trip. Once again, they took ages to tend to me at the reception, but it wasn't rudeness, it was just messy. They also somehow ran out of suckling pig for lunch even if we were pretty much the first guests in, and it's because they allegedly served it all for the previous day's dinner service. I'm not sure why we would be eating last night's leftovers anyway. They also said it generally should be reserved in advance, but there was no mention of this on the booking website (which actually explicitly mentions having to reserve other dishes) and I couldn't phone in from overseas so I didn't get the memo. We still decided to stay and make the best of this negative experience. The food was okay, but didn't live up to the hype and it was very expensive for how mediocre it was. I recall the octopus was a little rubbery. Disappointing experience that really...

We walked by the area and asked the local where we should have dinner then he recommended us 1601

The restaurant is in the historic building but we missed the opportunity to see everything because it was too late because we reached at 7:30pm

So happened we were able to be seated at 8:00 pm that’s the second round of dinner according to the host of the restaurant

The host is extremely helpful person to explain us everything including the food

We were seated in the upper floor close to the window which is a nice table to be

We ordered

Rice, a typical Portuguese dish, with duck meats inside and topped of sausage and bacon. The sausage and bacon 🥓 have a strong favor thus it overshadows the whole dish… and the duck meat doesn’t impress us at all 2 Octopus 🐙: it is just mediocre dish and we are a bit disappointed of how they prepared Veggie : we wanted to order one healthy dish … therefore it is just normal veggie dishes

White wines: we order one bottle that is perfectly okay but for Portuguese wines this is quite pricy

The servers are very friendly here

The venue id well decorated with all these Portuguese favors - chicken...