Calhou Restaurante — Restaurant in Lagos

We had an amazing dinner in Calhou. The place is a bit far from the noise of the centre. Located uphills, the family business offers a well selected menu of traditional southern porturguese cuisine and napoletan pizzas.

The place is really beautiful. The wooden walls and decorations make the place really cozy. The service is quite good. We were helped by the owner, such a nice woman. She was all the time asking us about the food and really willing to tell us about the story of the restaurant.

This detail definitely makes a difference because she made us feel at home. Her husband is the chef. He follows old family recipes for all the dishes. We asked about why they decided to put a corner for napoletan pizzas.

The story was that the son decided to quit his job and go to Napoli to learn how to make proper pizza. On his way back, he convinced his parents about the idea of offering the pizzas in the restaurant. It was a good decision. The guy is a showman. While we were eating, we couldn't stop staring at him while he was working on the pizzas. He seems to be really passionate about it. We realized he was using real italian ingredients and the final result looks amazing. You could see the classical "corniccione" of napoletan pizzas.

We ate a pestinho of mackerel with tomato. It was quite good. Then, we tried cod with pepper, olives and potatoes. It was super tasty. Then, we went for the carne de porco alentejana. Oh god! It was the best!

It was a traditional stew of the Algarve region, made with pork, clams, pepper, onion, coliflower, pickles, roasted potatoes, etc. What a dish! The sweetness of the pork, the saltiness and marine touch of the clams and the sourness of the pickles and vinegar. It can not be compared with other stews from other parts of the world. It has a strong personality. Amazing dish.

We continued with a dessert called heaven's bacon. Kinda milk tart. Really tasty. The owner told us it is her who makes all the desserts everyday. We finished the dinner with two digestives: Porto Velho and Moscatel. Both really sweet and strong. They have a long list of spirits and digestives.

For those who want to try nice wines, the restaurant offers a wide variety of wines from both, Algarve and Porto.

Price is above the average of the town, but it is definitely worthy. A beautiful place where to have a quiet and...

We had a lovely evening at calhou. Ive marked it down a star because when we initially arrived there was some confusion around our table. We'd accidentally booked for 9 instead of 7 and the hostes was saying wed have to change our reservation to 7 on our booking app or we would have to pay for 9 people. Luckily the restaurant was able to resolve this and we cohld sit and eat our meal. My father and i had the traditional clam and pork cataplana which had great flavour. It was a large serving for two so we couldnt quite finish it, but i would definitely recommend. Someone else in our group had a pizza, because the restaurant is half Portuguese and half nepalese, he said it was a great pizza. Somone else had the baby squid and said it was delicious. My mother had the seabass which she enjoyed but was served with vegetables that weren't great over steamed and alittle bland. My bother and his girlfriend also had a cataplana but chose the octopus and sweet potato. They were quite disappointed with there meal and said it wasnt great. We also had starters i tried the octopus salad wich was tasty well seasoned and falvour full. My brother got some sort of fish pate whcih he said wasnt enjoyable and very salty. All In all we had a nice meal together and enjoyed the service. I dont know if ill be coming...

We went to this restaurant on the recommendation of an Airbnb host. Also based on previous reviews we decided to try it out. The service was excellent - the server was very attentive especially because we had a baby with us. When our food arrived it looked fine. Unfortunately most of the dishes looked better than they tasted especially the codfish dish. The person who ordered it could not eat it - we all tried it and concurred so she informed the server and the dish was taken away. The pizzas were good. The lamb was overdone and tough. We asked for the bill and asked them to remove the codfish dish. The owner came to our table and proceeded to lecture us that although it may be possible ‘in our country’ to take a meal off the bill, in Portugal it was not. We would have accepted that of the owner had not been so condescending. She claimed the person could have asked for something else but that was not offered. The owner continued to lecture us despite the fact that we didn’t argue or try to get anything further. I guess she didn’t appreciate ‘foreigners’ telling her the codfish dish wasn’t edible. Obviously costumer service wasn’t her priority. She was more interested in getting her money than making her customers happy. Hence the poor review. Good service, good atmosphere didn’t make up for...