Mini Bar - José Avillez — Restaurant in Lisbon

Poor balance between pice and quality. High ambitions but bad executions. Beautiful room and ok service with nice food. But when you pay 330 euro per person (yes per person in Lissabon) for New Year’s Eve tasting menu you expect a lot. “Ok” and “interesting” is not acceptable at this price level. The food looked super good. The taste was just ok. The food plays a very high role at this restaurant. AND. The funky vibe atmosphere plays a very high role at this restaurant/ bar. This could be a match made in heaven. But the two are poorly combined here. Several very small dishes are constantly served. This put a high pressure on the serving. The concept is like high end fine dining star with a coat check, wine stored away from your table and cutlery placed precisely in front of you. In reality our jacked were laying on the neighbours couch. We constantly had to ask for our wine as we sat with empty glasses at many servings. Service and food had to be passed around by us as it was not physically possible to for the waiter to properly serve our booth. The constant presentation of the food could not be heard due to the high sound level of the entertainer and later the DJ. The music was so loud that we found it hard to have a conversation. Note that our group deliberately had seek a restaurant with DJ and a high vibe as we have a great experience with that from other restaurants/ nights. Lighting in hues of red and blue made our food look weird. This could have been acceptable at many restaurants but not at this price level and with this food ambitions. While the food looked good the taste was mediocre. At the third time truffle was used many passed the dish. The permanent light rig and stage make me guess it is not just for New Years Eve they have entertainment. The very very very long set with a piano player and female singer making smooth cover version of Lady Gaga and Freddie Mercury felt like being trapped in an elevator. It was too much of a bland things going on. The DJ forgot to read the room as food was being served at all tables when she started her high volume party set. Had the people not started to stand up and count down 10 seconds prior to midnight (at New Year’s Eve) to toast I don’t think she would have even noticed the starting of the New Year. New Year celebration continued will dancing which made sense with the DJ. but then it felt completely awkward that the waiter had two more servings of food at our table.

6 people payed 2000€ for that New Year’s Eve! We got wine and two drinks each. We drank a lot of wine but could have had more had it been served. I notice how many marked “local guides” on Google praise this place. But for us international people who have experienced this concept other places - it just fell flat.

I give it two stars. The last one is because the prices are lower at regular nights...

I had really high hopes for this place and was unfortunately let down.

We were sat at the bar while waiting for a table to open up. The cocktails are the only reason this place is getting the 2 stars. They were in the top 5 of one of the best I’ve had. (I could not find the cocktail menu online or remember the name of the drinks in the picture attached)

While sitting at the bar, we saw a-lot of food orders going out which really built our excitement considering the cocktails were out of this world.

The couvert was nothing special, both the olive bread and cornbread were pretty dry, the butters were interesting but nothing I’d want to continue eating after a few bites.

Giant foie gras pearl, I’m just gonna write this one off as it being something I personally don’t care for, it seemed to be the popular item in the restaurant because almost every table had an order of it.

The tartar cones, again nothing special, seemed almost under seasoned and after one bite I found myself not wanting another.

Crudo- same as the tartar cone, after one bite, my body did not want to continue eating it, lacked flavor and something about the taste felt off.

Tostada al pastor- just okay, nothing special that I would come back for or order again.

Octopus- just felt like boiled octopus with cream on top, nothing memorable or noteworthy about it.

Massaman curry- surprisingly this was the best dish out of everything we ordered.

It saddens me to leave this review because this restaurant really gave off the illusion of offering innovative recipes that would provide a flavorful punch but unfortunately 95% of the meal fell flat.

If you’re just coming for cocktails and the show, then it’s def a great date night spot but I would most certainly pass...

Came here on the recommendation of a friend for our first night in Lisbon. We had a reservation for 10:30 PM but there was definitely a lot off in terms of service and attentiveness.

First when you enter off the street, there's a hostess stand that says wait to be seated but the hostess had left the station so a few parties were queuing outside and peering inside. We then decided to just follow the signs where we found the same hostess just chatting away to a staff member.

We then decided to enter the book shelf but one of the servers in a red dress stopped and told us they were behind and we should sit at the other restaurant bar waiting. I do think staff should honour the 2 hour time limits they place on the tables to allow new customers to enter the speakeasy.

We watched as several other parties were turned away and also told to go to the bar. We then flagged two separate staff to let them know we were there for our 10:30 PM reservation as the server in the red dress had not told anyone we had arrived. This finally got us seated.

Staff seemed very busy and disorganized and were not communicating very well with one another. We finally were seated at 11 PM and they took our order at 11:30 PM. No one seemed very apologetic about the 1 hour wait.

Portions are comically small and the server was abrasive in his attitude, making fun of the way I was pronouncing the word "bill" with a Canadian accent.

The one saving grace was the live entertainment, which started at midnight. It was fun, cabaret-style dancing and outfits to popular hits.

Overall, I do not recommend going to this establishment. I'm sure there's much better experiences and food for value to be had in such a lively...