Mar ao Carmo — Restaurant in Lisbon

Mediocre food and a utter delusional manager.

We went here on a Tuesday evening. Ordered a Sangria and a couple of Oysters to start with. The first thing we noticed was the big black hair in the sangria, which is pretty disgusting, but hey... It happens. They immediately brought us a new one and some bread and olives for compensation, at least we thought so. More of that later. The oysters were ok. Nothing more to comment on that.

For the main dish we ordered a steak on a stone with fries and a linguine with clams, mussels and prawns. The steak on a stone got smashed and cut up on the stone. I've had my fare of steaks and think of myself as a decent stake preparer, but this almost looked painful. But hey, I'm in another country so maybe that's just the way it goes here. And to be honest, it wasn't that bad. It was ok, nothing more nothing less. Unfortunately after asking for some mayo multiple times the fries got cold as well...

The linguine on the other hand was nothing less than a mess. There was sand or something like that in it, the prawns weren't properly cleaned and more than a handful of clams weren't even open, which is never a good sign.

When they came to pick up the dishes and asked if it was ok, we named the problem with the food and immediately the manager got called. When my wife tried to explain, she got interrupted constantly by the manager with all kinds of meaningless excuses. "It's very busy" not even half of the tables were occupied. And all sorts of other nonsense.. When we stated that we were not interested in a free dessert and suggested that a discount would be more in order he immediately started to threaten to call the police if we wouldn't want to pay. Not wanting anymore abuse from the manager we said we would pay... Guess what was on the check? The bread and olives, which we never even ordered. When I pointed this out to the manager he said "but you ate it" i said we thought it was complementary because of the hair in the sangria... At that moment he threw away the card reader and ran away back into the restaurant. For a moment we considered to walk away, but after a couple of minutes a younger guy came to explain it was busy and this and that. We just wanted to pay and get the hell out. So we did.

Being in Portugal for almost two weeks we were very surprised about the excellent food and extremely friendly people. To be treated like trash for almost a hundred euro's at this place is not only an insult to us but to the...

My experience was awful. Tourists beware. Extremely overpriced. And I got food posing. I was there on July 25th and was my last night in Lisbon, I was super tired from the day and wanted something light n fresh but also it was a cold night so my eyes went to the buttered shrimp side dish and a fish soup being the main dish, the mgr/owner? Mentioned they don't do 1 person for the soup, but for me, he'd make the soup for 1 person. Sounded delicious until the 1st plate came in. The butter sauce was tasty, but I noticed that none of the shrimps had been deveined. When the waitress came, I pointed it out as I was doing it myself, and she was confused. She said "I didn't know that was a thing" and I'm like seriously? Ok my local Sprouts (grocery store) deveins their shrimp let alone a high end restaurant like this. Then the soup came in. Wasn't quite a soup. I was confused as to why I got a shallow plate to go with it. It was more of a stew with lots going on! I literally had 3 spoons of it and done. I did however consume about 2 to 3 of the mussles it came with. Anyhow the shocker came when I got my bill. 57 euros for a small dish of not cleaned shrimp and a hot mess of a fish soup. For 1 person. Whatever. I paid left. Well. I didn't sleep at all that night from food poisoning!!!! I never ever ever get food poisoning. Ever! I have a pretty resilient tummy if I shall say so myself. But something in that soup was bad or not cooked well that I had the runs ALL night long!! Without access to any meds. Pharmacies were closed and my hotel had none. I was miserable all night. Lovely way to spend my last night in Lisbon. Oh not to mention how terrified I was that it wasn't going to stop on time for my flight next day 😒 luckily it did! But it lasted through the morning....

We arrived arrived and got the table at the window which was to small being tall. They wre kind enough to change tables. But when it came to service it was a let down. The lady server did say take your time but we weren't sure about the menu so we needed abit more advice on what was good or popular on the menu. The young boy who had taken our order on our wine was very friendly and professional but disappeared after given us a bottle of wine. We had finished our bottle after our starter and was expecting someone to come over to offer another bottle but we were waiting until our meal had ended and still no one offered. As it was my partners birthday which they were aware of we would of liked abit of fuss as it was not busy but they were busy doing other things. Beside the service hats off to the chef the food was fantastic i had the octopus which was the best I ever had soft and creamy. My partner had seafood Cataplana which was beautiful, for starters we had prawns again beautiful and fresh but abit too much oil in the plate but that could just be the way the serve it be careful they forget to tell you the plates are extremely hot. We didn't bother with desserts but towards the end the lady server did give us a small slice if choc cake as a happy birthday gesture but unfortunately our experience was already dampened by the service which is a shame as the food is great. I feel like I'm having a moan but we would have spent double the money if we had the service. When it came to the bill the lady server basically asked how we would like to pay the tip as the service was not...