Magokoro Ramen Santa Apolónia — Restaurant in Lisbon

To be very generous this is, at best, a mediocre ramen restaurant. Nice space, but poor quality ramen and uncomfortable service make it a miss for me.

The decor is cool, as a lot of these sorts of ramen places seem to invest heavily in interior design, but they skimp on quality of ingredients and skill of preparation of dishes. I did not have a very good experience here, especially as communication was very difficult although she was not rude. Server didn't appear to speak English or Portuguese to a degree where I could ask a question. It was also slow even though it was only our table of 3 and one other table of 2.

There is no way to alter a dish since she doesn't understand anything, so beware of allergies, spice sensitivity, or dietary restrictions.

You also cannot add anything so I ended up with tantanmen (Japanese version of dandan noodles) with no meat! I have never heard of such a thing, unless it is specifically asked by vegetarians not to have pork. Needless to say, the server could not understand anything I was asking about the dish (like if there was a proper version). I just wanted real tantanmen, not the vegetarian one which tastes nothing like it should since there is no meat. It didn't even have the nutty flavours that many of these ramen places have in their tantanmen/dandan mian.

Music was bad. Loud, super annoying, and terrible quality of recording. Sounded like it was being played through broken speakers at high volume.

Dishes were tasteless and not fresh, mostly veg from a tin or from frozen. Overcooked noodles. Broth was too salty and lacked any other flavour. Sloppy, soggy presentation. My one friend enjoyed hers though, hence the extra star.

There are much better and slightly more authentic ramen spots (and way better Japanese food in...

I needed this. I'd been craving a spicy soup since the beginning of our trip, and the ramen really hit the spot. I had the spicy ramen (3 x🌶️), and it was a kicker. The broth was thick and flavourful with layers of umami. The noodle is thicker than the traditional ramen but is chewy. You get a generous topping of scallion, bean sprouts on top of the chasu / chicken and a whole egg.

What's more, on each table, there's additional chili paste that you can add to your ramen. It tasted a little like Lao Gan Ma mala chili paste. I'm here for the 🌶️🔥 if you can't already tell.

We arrived during off-peak hours, so the place was empty, but I can imagine the vibe when it's packed. Wonderfully decorated, it transports you to Shinjuku for a moment.

PSA: Cash only. At the time of our visit, they didn't accept international credit cards 💳 (there are ATMs at the metro station across...

We saw a lot of videos recommending this new place and we went to this on a Friday night at approximately 20:00hs. A guy received us politely and we asked for a table for two. An Asian woman came to us with a notebook asking for our names. We told her we don’t have reservation and we didn’t know we need to book in advance. She proceed to tell us that they were filly booked but the restaurant was empty. There were just three tables with customers. This woman said the only way they could serve us is if we eat the food quickly and leave. That was very out of place to say to customer who enters the place willing to eat to the restaurant. We decided to leave the place and eat somewhere else for this rude...