Restaurante Maria Portuguesa — Restaurant in Coimbra

We stayed for 1h30. Not because the food and drink was so amazing that we had to carefully chew to enjoy. We were told that one of the dishes would take 15 minutes and it ended up taking 45 minutes: just a little codfish on a mushroom in the oven. This was one of our 3 tapas.

The food itself was ok, but nothing that would justify such a great wait. One of the tapas was incredible - I never though one could make an oven baked egg rock hard and with a skin that felt like plastic wrapping.

The kitchen is staffed by students, which would be fine, but in a kitchen you kinda want to have someone who knows how to prep and cook - one of the staff was slicing an onion so horribly slowly and unevenly that going to the dentist to get your teeth pulled out feels less painful. No wonder everything takes so long.

The only dish that felt really good was unsurprisingly the one that didn’t require any actual cooking - a fried Portuguese chouriço which would taste good if you ran it over with a truck before serving.

I don’t understand the 5 star reviews. This is clearly a tourist trap. You really have to make an effort to eat bad in Portugal, and this place is really trying to provide you that...

this is a very well hidden tourist trap! based on all the good reviews I was expecting at least to receive food but my dog’s food tastes a million times better than what they serve. they have an improvised kitchen so be aware that preparing the food takes years because they cannot make several plates at once. Prices are waaaay to high for the quality of that thing they call food. We had some mushrooms with codfish and pasta with mushrooms and cream. I believe they used all the salt on the stuffed mushrooms because the other plate was tasteless. the mushrooms were eatable but definitely not worth 10 eur. the pasta on the other hand....they probably sat in water for too long because they were full of water, they had no salt at all and the sauce was actually barely present and it was anyway tasteless as well. the only good thing was a cherry tomato they used as garnish.... I have never ever in my life eaten something worst than those ( and the waiter said to someone at a different table that he recommends these because those with pesto are not...

Worst Restaurant in Portugal On the plus side, the waiter was very pleasant, they had a toilet seat, and the decor was interesting. On the negative side, the food was dire. It was like food thrown together by students without a sense of taste. No dish had any seasoning, sauce, or flavour. The aubergine with cheese and tomato was just that. The Chickpea and sausage salad was just sausages and chickpeas, no flavouring, dressing, or vegetables. It tasted of nothing. Cod in a roll had some onion in it, but I'd be embarrassed to serve it to close and sympathetic friends, let alone put it as a dish on a restaurant. Seriously, if you're a vegetarian, you're better off with a cheese omlette at a standard restaurant. I can only imagine that the 5 star reviews have been left by desperate vegans keen to big up a restaurant that claims to have a few non meat options than anybody who seriously is...