Portugália Cervejaria Belém — Restaurant in Lisbon

Place has a nice view and decent beer. The croquettes were bland and tasteless. The garlic shrimps were ok but a little high on salt. My biggest issue with this place is that they charge for the butter (each unit ) and bread (each). Not a big deal unless you realize what I'm about to describe. As soon as you seat on the table , you are already welcomed with a basket with 4 breads and 4 butters. Classic tourist trap move, right? Not only they bring it to the table without asking, but pretty sure a bunch of customers may assume it is complementary. Now, I did realize since the beginning and actually ended consuming 2 butter and 2 breads ( came handy for the salty shrimps). I was ready to fight over the bill expecting them to charge me for all for units of each. I can confirm they have intentionally left the basket on the table until we were done eating. My guess, hoping we will grab more bread and butter. BIG surprise when at the end the check came with only 2 breads and 2 butter. Where is the problem with this you may ask: either the restaurant is wasting half their bread and butter with each couple the seat in, or they are reusing the remaining units for the next customers (BIG NO NO , specially on COVID times) I really find hard to believe they will just throw away bread and butter customers don't get to consume. I walked around and saw several other tables with exactly the same situation. People pushing full baskets to the side, or just grabbing one unit. Not happy about this, as I feel I may have been serve recycled food. Easy way to stop this: just ask the customers if they want the bread and butter before bringing it to the table, and just bring as much as the customer are willing to...

Our experience was quietly disappointing. We ended up here because it was the closest restaurant that looked good. My boyfriend and I speak spanish but we preferred to speak english as we feel more confortable with. This detail has an importance because as soon as we seated the waiter came, speaking barely english, with 3 big fish (fresh but big). My boyfriend explained that he wanted to order Sardinas and that’s why we came here. The waiter replied « No we don’t have », we felt a bit disappointed but it’s normal for a fish restaurant to not have all the time every fish on the menu. But he didn’t let us the time to think, he was standing in front of us with the 3 fish waiting for us to say one. So feeling a bit force we accepted to choose one of those. It was tasty but we didn’t know how much we will have to pay since he didn’t say to us how much weight the fish was. So we choose to not take a dessert and just leave right after finishing. What a surprise on our way to leave to see on a table of portugese couple 2 dishes of sardinas (they came way after us). We truly think it’s because somehow they saw on us tourist people to scam. On the table we had olive oil, vinegar, bread and butter. But do not open or touch it, it’s not for free :) and obviously nobody take the time to say it before. Another advice, check your bill before paying because they wanted to charge us for bread and oil even if we didn’t touch it.

I’m rating the experience and will...

This may have been the worst service we've received at a European restaurant, and we've visited several countries. We decided to try this place based on the recommendation of our hotel; however, after 45 minutes of waiting for our food and watching two tables that sat after us receive their food (and nearly finished their meal), I decided to approach the waiter. He disputed the fact that we had been at the restaurant that long and said he didn't remember even taking our order. Keep in mind that the kids received their soup for appetizer earlier. To prove his point, he walked me over to the screen that documents the time he put in our order. Unfortunately for him, the machine was an objective opinion that verified that we had been at the restaurant for at least 45 minutes. He was speechless. Me and my family walked out, but not before expressing our disappointment. Even the customers sitting around our table that arrived several minutes after us were in disbelief at the amount of time we had to...