Restaurante Fangas Veg — Restaurant in Coimbra

• S C A M * I was so angry after leaving this place, that I decided to leave my first ever review on here!

Keep in mind that they have two different restaurants right next to each other - the reviews are mixed for both and I think this is just a great business model to scam people, because the first restaurant seems legit with genuinely good reviews, and that way confuse people and get them to visit the vegetarian one, too. They are selling you pre-made, cheap supermarket dishes warmed up in a microwave, presenting it as something fancy and healthy with their well-worded menu.

Me and my friend were looking for a good place with something healthy, so we got really excited when we came across this place and the menu. The girl working there explained to us that it is petiscos (tapas), and that we should order multiple dishes. In all fairness, she was really nice and polite, but I also feel like she knows what she is doing, because she was really trying to sell their dishes and push us to order more. The prices were definitely high for Portuguese standards, so we decided to go for 3. When they arrived, we just looked at each other with disappointment. They were sooooo small! Absolutely no value for the price! The same goes for the quality! We were left hungry, so we decided to go for another dish with noodles and veggies. It came looking more decent, like there were noodles on one side of the bowl and veggies on the other, but it quickly became clear that veggies were just covering the top of one side of the bowl, it was just noodles with a couple of tiny pieces o veggies to fool you. The noodles were very clearly the kind you buy from the supermarket for less than 50 cents. We then looked around and realised that they did not have a proper kitchen there, it was the tiniest room where barely two people can fit in without moving much. And we very clearly heard the sound of a microwave many times. Brilliant idea in a way to scam people. You will pay a lot for nothing and you will pay even more after, because I promise you that you will leave so hungry, you will end up going to another place...

Well that was a very odd meal. I ordered the “degustation” and it ended up being one kind of cheese, hummus, beets in watery yogurt (with pistachios) and roasted chestnuts. It seemed very unbalanced (very oily and rich, nothing fresh, light or even green!) and kind of thoughtless - how are you supposed to get the yogurt out of the cup if you don’t get a spoon, and why does the hummus not come with bread? Look at my picture - in the dish with the beets, it’s pure liquid from the white stuff down. How do the staff here think you’ll eat that?! I ended up ordering a bread basket so I’d have something to put the hummus on, and to soak up the yogurt from the beets, and I’m not joking when I say I thought they charged me €2 for two TINY slices of plain white bread. Basically two slices of baguette (each cut in half to make four pieces, but still only two tiny, thin slices)… but then in the end it wasn’t on my bill. So I don’t know if that was the €2 bread basket and they didn’t charge me for it or if that was the free bread everyone should have got and they forgot my bread basket. I was at a table on the sidewalk so I basically didn’t get any service, so I can’t speak to that element of the meal. Overall I would say it was overpriced and...

3.0 overall.

SERVICE: 3.0. Friendly and polite. We were at a rather small table, but oddly the empty plates weren't cleared when emptied, thus we stacked them precariously on a corner of the table. Appreciated that they charged our US credit card in Euros, without the 2 trick "euro-to-dollar exchange" questions that the credit card machines of many Portuguese restaurants queried us with; this was worth half-a-star.

AMBIANCE: 4.0. Attractive, intimate interior.

FOOD: 3.0. 3.5: Chestnuts with caramelized onions. Reminded us of Japanese nimono, and the chestnuts made it interesting. 3.0: Figs with Port wine. Not sure what the separate small bowl of sauce was for, as it tasted the same as the sauce in which the figs were served. 2.5: Aubergine gratin, with pasta noodles. Rather bland. 2.0: Terrina de Legumes (vegetables). Seasoning was spicy, with a taste unfamiliar to us.

WINE: 2.5. We had a glass of the house red and one of the house white.

NOTE: if you made reservations by email, it would be good idea to have a print out or ready on your...