Bota Alta — Restaurant in Évora

Once a wine cellar and now a cozy Fado hideaway, Bota Alta, like wine, is a place that gets better with time. Your evening is best served by allowing any sense of linear time to slip away. Savor the house vinho and begin your meal with a selection of regional samplings, plated without fuss and elegant by virtue of their locality. The dishes we ordered were wholesome and generous, as if we had shown up late to grandma’s house and awoken her, but this grandma was unwilling to let us go hungry, and she had a fierce recollection of the recipes of the old country. I don’t believe fado is performed every night, but we were present for several folks to play, and it was about as good as it gets. The acoustics of the cellar are anomalous and there was plenty of scarf-wringing wailing and mustache wax to go around. A dinner here is somewhat expensive but we watched our euros go towards dinner gratis for the musicians, so it’s justifiable. A worthy watering hole for an evening in Evora, and one that will remain on the mind long after your journeys...

TL;DR overpriced, slow service, no fado music.

We came here with the promise of live Fado music, advertised as starting at 8pm. We arrived in good time, got a table, ordered some wine and then waited. And waited. And waited. 8pm came and went with still no sign of a musician in sight, so we ordered some food: the “roasted cheese with oregano”.

This was simply a small plate of microwaved cheese with some oregano sprinkled on top. And they had the nerve to charge €9 for this?!

The two women running the restaurant seemed to be greeting, seating, serving and cooking for everyone. Locals were served first, several tables of tourists were left waiting indefinitely.

At 9pm we had run out of wine, run out of cheese, and run out of patience. We left, leaving cash on the table. We happened to leave leave a tip but only because we didn’t want to wait another 90 minutes to get the €2 change...

El lugar es acogedor con música de fado de fondo pero si lo que se busca es comer y hacerlo a un tiempo razonable olvídense. La mujer que regenta el restaurante tardo más de una hora en servirnos una sopa con verduras muy poco hechas (patatas prácticamente crudas) y raspas de lo que se intuye era bacalao, yo imagino que las sobras del mismo... Además con el tema del lenguaje malintencionadamente determinó que la ración de la supuesta sopa eran dos raciones (se ve que el portugués y el castellano son idiomas tan lejanos como el latín y el chino) por lo que nos cobró doble y concluyó que el otro plato de carne que pedimos ya no era necesario. El pan a 3€ lo retiró sin que termináramos y el agua a precio de manantial purificado del monte Everest. El queso muy bueno eso sí, aunque a un euro por encima de lo que ponía en carta. Añadir que nos sirvió la sopa en platos con manchas de lo más agradable. En resumen sitio para tomar algo de vino, abstenerse de comer que en la ciudad hay lugares mucho mejores y que no tratan al extranjero como esa mina a la que extraerle oro con la escusa de la comunicación. Experiencia decepcionante diluida en unos eternos 90 minutos de espera, esto también aplicable a los lugareños que en la mesa de al lado también esperaron un plazo más que razonable. Espero que otros no caigan en...