When you come to Portugal, you must eat seafood. I think it's a law or something. Anyway, as part of our journey of trying all the seafood we could, we came to Solar 31 with the intent to get crab. We ordered the crab and clams to hold us while we waited. The restaurant was very busy so we made sure to grab a last minute reservation and it's a good thing we did. When you first enter the restaurant you will notice all the fish and crustaceans in the tanks, which is a good sign! The fresher the better. The food was certainly fresh which is very common in Portugal!

While we came for the crab, my favorite dish was the clams! They had this lovely citrusy broth which brightened up the dish and paired with the clam meat very well. When the crab arrived I was excited to see the meat of the body put back into the purse/shell with a sauce. The meat of the crab was a little sweet and pretty tasty. The meat in the purse though with the sauce was a bit bland and tasted overwhelmingly of mayonnaise. However, I had a brilliant idea! Remember that citrus clam sauce? I combined it with the crab and mayo to add acidity and that improved it a lot for me. I would recommend trying the same combo!

The service was a bit hard to get ahold of sometimes but that's fairly common in Europe so I don't mind too much. Ultimately I'm torn between 4 and 5 stars on this one. I'll say 4 because the crab was a bit pricey and so it would've been nice to have a better balanced sauce for the crab body since that was half the dish.