Arca Velha — Restaurant in Guimarães

After seeing some great reviews online about this place, I decided to have my family (my mom, wife, and three sisters) walk to this place during our day trip to Guimaraes to have lunch. We walked a bit to get there too pasted lots of other great little restaurants along the way. The atmosphere was dark, a few people inside, bad lighting, and not very friendly. Nonetheless, I had read it was owned by a man and his wife and so I wanted to support them, especially given the reviews I had read. The owner came over and took our order, got upset with my mom for asking for something to drink, said he would take the food order first and then come back for our drink order. We didn't dispute and followed his request. He never came back to get our drink order. The soup we ordered came out and still no drinks. It was hot inside the restaurant. No air circulation (which is fine) but also, no water, no drinks. Not until we asked him again for a third time for our drinks. We then ordered. There was 6 of us and we ordered three meals which we were all splitting since some of us were hungry and others were not. He got upset and questioned why we were ordering just three meals when there was six of us. Now I can understand if the place was busy and we were taking up table space without all of us ordering entries but that was not the case here. There was only two other people in there at this time. Luckily I speak Portuguese fluently and was able to communicate to him that we just wanted the soup and would be splitting the meals we ordered and if there was a problem with that, we would happily finish our soup, pay the bill, and leave. He walked away annoyed not saying a word. Our food came (mediocre at best), we ate and left. While I hate to give this place a bad review because I do want to support local mom and pop shops.. I do not wish others to have this...

The most authentic Portuguese experience you can get. Also cheap and tasty food there. I got two main dishes and coke zero for 18€. It was plenty of food I haven't eaten anything that day because I left early on bike from Braga and was really hungry. For regular person 1 dish will be enough. Great place friendly owner. He doesn't speak English and menu is handwritten in Portuguese but there aren't many options and he also recommended me one of the dishes. Feels like home inside. You can see part of the kitchen which looks like they rebuild the apartment into restaurant. If I visit Gimaraes one more time I'll definitely stop there to grab...

Escaping from the touristy center we bumped onto this small restaurant run by a lovely +70 years old couple. We asked if we could have dinner but they only had prego no prato (it was Tuesday) and we wanted some fish. She grabbed her purse and went shopping for some! As a result we had excellent battered fish fillets with salad for dinner. All super fresh, local, good...