Ruvida — Restaurant in Lisbon

What they did right was the food, I must be fair. I particularly fancied beef tongue starter & duck ragu pasta. Now let me start with a few things happened that did not make much sense:

10 mins after we closed the menu (which was an evident signal that we are ready to order), no one came to take our orders. Roughly 3 employees in total seemed to be running back & forth & in & out all over the place, to serve other 5 or 6 tables and no one had the time to stop running to take orders for us. But we could understand, we thought. So we took the initiative to request orders ourselves with a waitress. She said, and I quote "Oh yes. But could you wait 2 mins ? I need to take 1 chair from your table. Can I remove your bag off the chair ? " Yes she can. So she did to make a new table. But this is the 1st red flag.

There is no printed wine list available at the restaurant. The waitress said just tell her what we would like and she'd bring us a bottle according to our preferences. I have to admit it is our fault where we did not ask her to switch to a new bottle when we were not particularly fond of what she brought us. Weakly minded, I said it was fine, under the pressure, the pressure that I might bother the already swamped employee for my wine taste. Oh BTW, she did not inform us of the price before she opened the bottle. The question is, why did they NOT provide wine menu ?

While the waitress was right about to the pour the wine for tasting, she suddenly got called out to conversate with her colleague / manager. During their chat, our bottles were remained empty and wine bottle was sitting silently on the table. We awkwardly waited for them to finish the talk so we could resume the course.

The restaurant tonight was as noisy and hectic as a fish market . If you are in for a group meal, that might be the place to go. I do not think it's appropriate for intimate & romantic occasions.

Overall, I do not think their incompetent service has anything to do with "bad attitude" . But they are probably overloaded by work or lack of experience. Nonetheless, as a customer, I feel the employees simply want to finish off their tasks, prioritizing over of "serving the customers". All of these not-too-subtle details could have been avoided, especially for the price...

I accidentally took a trip to Italy last night by going to this hidden gem in the middle of Praça d’Armada. What a treat! In this restaurant you can find real Italian food, tortellini in brodo, tagliatelle with duck ragu, Cacio e Pepe...

My boyfriend and I were greeted by a sweet and very knowledgeable waitress who accompanied us to our reserved table. It was such a great spot! Valentina, who I suspect might be the owner, spent the two hours we were there crafting the most delicate pasta, tagliatelle, orecchiette, tortellini, it was incredible to see the dedication and passion put into this! I knew we were in for a treat, and I was not disappointed!

We started off with a melanzane parmeggianna, which they had the nice courtesy of splitting in two two plates, beautifully presented. Flavorful and accompanied with a balsamic reduction and a raspberry vinaigrette, the dish was incredibly well balanced! This dish was a special of the day and I ate it so fast, I forgot to take a picture, oops!

We decided to have both Cacio e Pepe, one of our favourite Italian dishes, and this was without a doubt, one of the best ones we have had! Exquisite creaminess... the quality of the ingredients was translated in each bite. Perfect size portions which means room for dessert....

Mascarpone Cream and PannaCotta... Creamy was the theme of last night and I am very okay with that! The mascarpone cream was a treat, I couldn’t stop myself from going back for more, delicate yet strong flavor, it was my favourite one!

I can’t wait to go back and try different plates!! This kind of restaurant is a place where you won’t be scared to change your dish thinking it might not be as good as the one you loved the last time, they all are incredible!

Pretty sure this is now one of my favorite Italian Restaurants ever, definitely my favorite one in...

Service was good, the waiters are super friendly and they have a really nice terrace. The quality of the pasta is really good and you can tell its fresh.

However, the amount they charge per dish does not equal the quality of the flavour of the dishes. We ordered the pasta n'ostra (Cold pasta sheet, shrimp tartare, with mango), there was no mango in the starter, and we were left with slimy raw shrimp in a black watery sauce, that was unappetizing, all 10 people on our table tried it and did not like it, we had to return it, yet still got charged for it. The sardine's with caramelised onions and pine nuts starter was really good.

For the mains, we ordered the special clam risotto & saffron scialatielli, which were 30 euros each. The clam risotto was nice, but not creamy enough, or anything to shout about other than being nicely presented. The saffron scialatielli just did not work, the pasta itself was good, but there was way too much saffron which overpowered the dish and the flavour combination left me wondering what I had just eaten (not in a good way). We also ordered the 60 euro T-bone steak, this ended up being a fried veal with cheese and parma ham on top. The quality of the meat just wasn't there it tasted like it had been over tenderised either with a mallet or some sort of enzyme. Given 10 people we pretty much tried everything on the menu, the only dish that people really liked was the pasta with duck ragu and the cacio e pepe.

Overall 2 star, you have great pasta but for me the flavour combinations with the sauces chosen just...