Restaurante O Frade — Restaurant in Lisbon

TLDR: Michelin recognized eats for a reasonable price. In your face cooking is a very nice touch but also produces hiccups in service.

Vibe: 4/5. Located in the Belem neighborhood of Lisbon, O Frade is a cozy restaurant serving. Ith lunch and dinner. The dining room consists of 1 large U shaped bar which allows roughly 12 people to dine for each sitting. With this kind of scarcity in table space, one must feel comfortable sitting nearby other diners and in a relatively small space for the duration of the meal. The U shape bar serves the purpose of allowing diners watch the kitchen staff prepare their food right in front of them on the inside of the U bar. A truly unique and fun experience for those that like having an open kitchen type experience. Also to note, with the most recent MIchelin Bib Gourmand accolade being awarded to O Frade, the restaurant is more busy than ever, with every seating being at max capacity so reservations are highly advised.

Service: 3/5. Unfortunately this is where I felt O Frade needed a bit of refinement. During our lunch service, we felt the service was just not up to par with what I would expect from a Michelin recognized establishment. We had reservations for around noon and we're seated immediately, however it took quite some time for us to get our food and drink orders in (this is with our waiter/chef right in front of us). Granted, the kitchen/wait staff is splitting duties between cooking and serving for the 12 patrons at the bar which I am sure can get hectic. Because of the space constraints of the kitchen, it seems O Frade relies heavily on batch cooking. They wait to fire up a dish only until several people order the same thing so they can do one large batch of it and serve it at the same time. This makes total sense from a kitchen management point of view, however it sometimes creates a lag in meal pacing and losing the ability for diners to experience flavor progression. We had moments in our meal where we went without food for a handful of minutes or we were served things out of order to what would normally be expected in a typical service. This also made our wine choices difficult, as we were constantly surprised with dishes we thought we would be receiving later, leaving us with the incorrect wine for the dish at hand. A little nitpicky? Perhaps, but noteworthy for those having elevated expectations, absolutely.

Food: 4/5. O Frade had some delicious takes on Portuguese food. For lunch, we decided to order heavily from their tapas section and split a main course. Our order consisted of the razor clams, special pie, pork fat, tuna over eggs and the duck rice entre. The razor clams, which they have become famous for from travel shows, lived up to the hype. Simply prepared in olive oil, salt and garlic, the clams were plump, tender and delicious. The duck rice was also a crowd pleaser, being served in a cast iron pan complete with crunchy rice bits on the outside and tender duck on the inside. The special pie left a lot to be desired, as it sat out in the kitchen a few more minutes than it needed as the center was cold when served. With the food we ordered and several glasses of wine, our bill came in well under $100 euros, making this a very budget friendly meal considering the pedigree of the restaurant and what we received. Overall, was very pleased with the food at O Frade and...

I've wanted to go to this place for quite some time, so perhaps my expectations were set too high.

We didn't get to sit at the bar since we were 4 people, so instead had a table for 4 outside. It was just about warm enough with the outdoor heater.

We asked to try the house red and weirdly it was just water (literally someone probably put water in the bottle and hadn't thrown it out). I tried to tell the waiter, but he thought I just didn't like the wine (we had a portuguese speaker with us so it was not a language barrier issue), a second waiter tried it and agreed, thew out the bottle, but by then we had a different wine from the first waiter - the second bottle was a better wine so no harm done).

The servings are generous and it is a sharing plate concept so for 4 people we took 4 starters, 3 mains and 2 desserts.

Starters: Razor clams Pato a Bulhǎo style - Very good Aged Tartare - tasty, a little heavy on thick cut chopped shallots for my liking but overall good Rabbit with pickled shallots and a lot of mustard seeds - this was OK Tuna Salad - honestly couldn't see the point of this dish, ultra thin shavings of dried cured tuna, gem lettuce and slices of orange. I could barely tell there was tuna in the dish, - definitely a miss

Mains: Duck rice - tasted of rice with orange juice - a little strange. I could see that there was duck and little bits of chorizo but the orange was unnecessarily over powering Monkfish - the fish was overcooked and the accompanying fennel was doused in a citrus dressing - so a miss Oxtail/Beef - Overal the best of the main dishes that we tried

Dessert: House special - Very good (figs, with a compote and yogurt icecream and crumble). Chocolate mousse with whole hazelnuts , didn't look pretty but mousse was tasty,

Overall: Service: Friendly helpful service, although they looked under pressure, so perhaps a little under staffed, Wine: No idea what happened on the wine thing - corked is one thing but ...water???. But the red wine from the owners vineyard was a hit. Food - OK but not exceptional and there were a few that need a recipe/cooking re-think IMHO.

Would I go again? Probably not, but I am very open to the possibility that it was just an off night (I'd definitely like to think so given the other very...

Unbelievably the worst experience ever!! First of all it was the way too salty to take a bite. It is really hard to take a even touch the dishes. The chef took a one big scoop of bite in his mouth my dish right before it served right in front of my eyes. and then the dish came to me to serve. I felt so uncomfortable. it feels like l had to a left over food after paying all the my money. I thought he already knew that the mushroom risotto was the way too salty to serve that is why he had to came out to table zone to take a bit once more because ha was not sure the taste. That looks like he had no confidence to his dishes. the restaurant is overestimated over all. the cleanness kindness facility tastes serving are all terrible. I had been traveled all over the couriers of EU and that was the WORST taste and experiences out of entire all my experiences from EU. The restaurant is too small even the Kichern was. The kitchen was located in front of right before toilet. it feels like the toilet was in the kitchen. I can see the employee was clean the dishes while we had a food. And he was not eager to clean perfectly. Looks like get the plates and cutlets through the runny water without using dish soap. i feel disgusted the cutlet and plates were served for my food. i am not sure it is due to the size of kitchen or not. they put out all the ingredient in the serving area. and they take a lot of time to put them on the dish to decorate right before it served. it looks like the are too focused and eager to make a pretty decoration rather than taste itself. for example, they brought the wrapped in plastic bacalau out from MICROWAVE and in the serving area they took 10min to decorate from all kind of species and ingredients in serving area(bar side). looks pretty but not professional dishes. it is not cuisine it is totally a waste of my money especially my time. BE CAREFUL BEFOR YOU GO FOR THE...