Trattoria Donatella — Restaurant in Lisbon

First, let me just say my friends seemed to enjoy this restaurant a lot, and the service was truly kind. The only thing worth noting about the service is that the waiters don’t seem to know too much about the foods and drinks in the menu, responding to questions about the specifics of the food with something less helpful to my actual query and instead taking the approach of “I don’t really know, but what i CAN tell you, is that this, this and that are our best sellers”. Maybe this doesn’t make all people uneasy for me, after 6 years with customer-facing jobs and 4 years in the restaurant industry as a waiter and bartender, knowing your menu inside and out (or bullshitting your way through at the very least is an absolute MUST). That being said, they did great, and definitely had the right posture throughout, so just a small (but important) are for improvement.

When it comes to the food however, of which i tried a lot of, this for me was an absolute issue from start to finish.

For a drink i had the red fruits lemonade, it was good but was missing a bit of body, it tasted a bit like unflavored sparkling water with a red fruits syrup instead of an actual lemonade.

For entrees i had the presunto with mellon and the bruschetta with burrata. The presunto with mellon (8€ i think?) was really not good at all for two reasons, the quality of the presunto was so-so at best and the melon was barely sweet at all, so no contrast there like you’d expect. The bruschetta was good, the burrata cheese on it was soft and amazing, however i don’t think two palm-sized pieces of toasted bread with some burrata justify the 9€ price tag. Think about this for a second, if you share with someone it means you each pay 4.5€ for a 2 bite item.

For a main i ordered the gnocchi with tomato sauce and meatballs, and let me just say, this was by far the low point of my night, there is so much wrong with this plate I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with the price tag, a whopping ~16.5€ if i remember correctly, and this gets you, if memory serves me right, around 10 small gnocchi (quite good and soft actually), the most generic tomato sauce known to man and very clearly just an ingredient shared with the pizzas as an afterthought, and i kid you not, THE worst meatballs I’ve had in my life, not only in taste, not only in their small, almost red grape-like size, but they were dry, i mean so dry that the outer layer was devoid of any moisture and the most ironic part is that they come DIPPED IN SAUCE. So guys, tell me, where and for how long were these meatballs sitting before they were introduced to my plate might i ask ?

Some other dishes i tasted slightly: pasta with pesto, and i felt no real character in the pesto sauce. I work with a former Michelin star restaurant employee, so i have a good baseline for pesto, so this was quite painful for me.

Foods i have seen but have not tasted: the shrimp croquettes, which have a different name I can’t remember now, however i can attest that what was received was absolutely not what was perceived. They did, however look quite appetizing, and seem to have been well received by the ones who ordered it. The carpaccio also seems to have been well received. The focaccia also looked quite nice and actually looked like a good value for money, you basically get what seems to be an entire loaf of focaccia sliced into thick slices with two containers, one with garlic butter and another with a dried tomato paste? Can’t remember.

On a final food related note, i found it weird that there was nothing to snack on while we underwent the process of sitting down, waiting for the others to arrive and actually order which in total took about an hour ? Some breadsticks (paid of course) would’ve been nice, or anything really. Just a thought.

TLDR:

Service: Nice service, big smiles, good humor and light ambience.

Food: Expensive and underwhelming with very little uniqueness or creativity, and even a few concerning observations.

Ambience/Location: Good on both aspects.

EDIT: They replied...

Top line - GREAT food!!

First time at Donatella and we will 100% return. For this visit, we had the burrata and Parma ham pizza and the lasagna. Both were incredible. The pizza dough was perfect - tasted just like you’d get in Napoli. Can’t wait to return and try more options. We have eaten at so many pizza places in Lisbon and this is definitely in our top 2.

Next, the lasagna… I have never said this about lasagna before, but it melted in my mouth. You can tell they make this the day before and let the flavors develop overnight. It was one of the best lasagnas I have ever had. I could have eaten 2 of them. It was that good.

They are on a street with competition. Donatella is MUCH better than their Italian restaurant competitor 2 doors down, and their pizza alone was also a little better than another very good pizza place on the other side of them that serves mostly take out pizza.

We also enjoy eating at off hours between lunch and typical dinner time so we appreciate the 2pm opening time. It is easy to go at off hours and get a table and relax.

Truly a great...

Pizzeria Donatella... Where do I start. The whole dining was a mix of emotions.

We ordered a pasta and a pizza .

The pasta, though delicious, arrived lukewarm just 10 minutes after ordering. This made me question if it was freshly prepared.

The pizza was seemingly forgotten by the servers. A waiter asked about it after my pasta was already served. When the pizza finally arrived, it was fresh and tasted excellent, as did the pasta, albeit cold at this point as 10 more minutes had already passed

When trying to order tiramisu for dessert the waiters forgot to hand us a menu even after two requests, leading us to order tiramisu without a menu instead. The tiramisu was good.

We dined during the euro finals so it was a busy night. But judging the other reviews this service problem seems to be a constant.

When actually served fresh it's good food but the service left much to be desired...