Colina — Restaurant in Lisbon

Based on hotel recommendation we decided to have dinner. Although I tend to steer from restaurants with less than 4.3 average reviews we gave it a shot based on perusal of Google individual reviews.

We got there at before 1800H on Sunday. A few observations:

It appeared lwe got there prior to the dinner rush. The wait staff did not look too enthused to have us there. After looking at the menu and we finally settled on the dishes we wanted, the waiter stated the only items we can order are the ones on the first page of the menu because it is Sunday. So back to square one we went. It turned out to be incorrect because as we were waiting for our check we noticed the incoming customers were ordering dishes off the whole menu. After getting our orders it took awhile to get them out. As the waiter was serving us the items we ordered he mentioned they don’t have the salmon but they have the sea bass prepared as a substitute. He then asked if sea bass is okay instead of salmon as he was serving the items we ordered. Because we have ample food and this would just add to an already long day I recommended to the group we would just share what we have. For food taste: Grilled sea bass is fantastic. My wife’s shrimp soup is not to her liking. My curried shrimp felt it was too stringy and chewy. The waiter never stopped once during the meal to check on us. He approached us only when the dinner rush started walking in and after they (the employees) have their dinner. As we were reviewing our bill I noticed additional items on it that we did not order. It turned out that the items on the table with plastic wrapping over the plates and bread are optional items. Because they were already on the table we assumed incorrectly that they are free for the sit in dining patrons… lessons learned for us. I have to give credit to the waiter who talked to the upset ladies in our group… he gave her a free bottle of wine as a way of apologizing for the...

Awful.

The toilets are nice and clean, but that is about the best thing about the whole place.

The wine is also ok, but I would need 2 bottles to myself before considering any of the food to be palatable…

The food was terrible, I was served a prawn cocktail and it seemed like the prawns had been left in the fridge for at least a week - very dry, and not fresh at all… there are many other places locally that will serve you fresh fish - go there instead!! Please!!!

For my main, I was persuaded to try their cod speciality (minhota style), being promised that it was very good…

In my mind, good is not what it was… it was overcooked, fried as if it had been forgotten about in the fryer, and discovered a few days later… and then smothered in fried onions, which felt like an attempt to hide the monstrosity of a fish dish beneath it… truly disgusting…

The accompanying fried potatoes were most definitely frozen before being reheated… not in the “Heston Blumenthal - triple cooked chips” kind of way, but in that terrible “we cooked too many roast potatoes yesterday, let’s reheat some of them today” kind of way… that terrible texture of frozen potatoes… I ate one and left the rest…

On top of this, the cheeky waiter put cheese and cold meats onto the table as we sat down… not realising what this was, we opened it and had a couple of slices of each… not bad, but the trick is that he then charged us €12 for this in the final bill… cheap trick against a tourist if you ask me…

The waiter (Eduardo) was grumpy and not helpful in the slightest…

AVOID THIS AWFUL PLACE, it should be closed down… actually - I’d like to see Gordon Ramsay turn up and spit out their food… I wish I had...

Food was good… service was terrible. We only ended up having soup because the server was so rude to us. The man outside greeting us with dark glasses in plain clothing who spoke to us in Portuguese was friendly. However, our server who was an older man with glasses was extremely unpleasant. If I could give 0 stars for service I would. We sat down and immediately he came over asking us what we wanted to order without giving us much time to view the menu. We said we would order drinks first and then food after and he said we had to order everything right away and needed to decide. What restaurant that is practically empty at 11pm at night makes you order everything all at once? We were already uncomfortable with the way he spoke to us so instead we only ordered 4 soups. Then he proceeded to walk over to his colleagues and start mocking us for only ordering soups… in Portuguese, as if we didn’t understand (we all speak Portuguese and English) …absolutely unacceptable!! What restaurant treats their customers in this way? Our hotel recommended us this restaurant but we told our hotel immediately upon coming back not to recommend this restaurant any longer to travellers. There are lots of amazing restaurants in Lisbon, my advice is to Spend your money elsewhere where they will actually appreciate...