Trovas Antigas — Restaurant in Lisbon

Perfect tourist trap

Over 25 years of travels I think I can spot a tourist trap but this one just made the top ten in my list!

Details below but this is my conclusion if you don’t have the time: hard pass due to lack of real kitchen with real chefs, mediocre Fado show, sales tactics that stain the Portuguese tourist experience which is amazing in 99% of places.

This place doesn’t have a kitchen, don’t believe me??… just enter their door and to your immediate left, the 2m x 2m open space is the, so called, “kitchen area”.

All the food that will be served is pre-cooked and stored in containers, the two “chefs” assembles the plates similar to how it is done at Ikea restaurants. Every client is greeted by the staff in the waiting area of the restaurant, everybody is all smiles but make no mistake, everything is tailored to get your business as much as possible. The table is “pre-loaded” with olives, bread, butter cups and cold cuts but they don’t tell you there are not on the house as you would think based on Portuguese tradition or because you simply didn’t order them.. every one of these items are actually listed on the menu, it amounts to about 20€…. Of course you’ll have an awkward moment to simply refuse the starters if you don’t want them and that’s exactly what they are betting on. About the mains - we got what almost every other review recommends, the grilled octopus (again, there is no grill on the premisses) and the black pork. Average plates, the pork meat was cooked okay, the sauce I guess is a “secret” combination of different sauces found in stores and the precooked baked potatoes that must have been reheated in the single kitchen appliance, the electric oven. The meals are priced high for what they are but considering that there is a Fado show most people will consider acceptable prices. The show - 6 songs in total of about 2’:00”-2’:30” each, upbeat tempo, felt rushed, no drama, nothing spectacular, very forgettable experience. I am not a Fado expert but I had the chance to listen to a Fado performance in another setting and I absolutely got the goosebumps. The cherry on top? After the show, the singer hustled each table with CDs to sell… try to dodge this awkward moment when the “artist” is breathing on your neck asking for your business. There were 3 different CDs and if you want all of them on a memory stick shaped as a guitar, it will set you back 40€. The tables setup is mediocre, covered with transparent plastic sheets and one time use paper rectangles, even the cheap kebab places in Lisbon have tables covered with cotton sheets. Last comment, they only have bottles of wine, a decent selection, priced from 20€ to about 38€/bottle but why not sale by glass for people who cannot go through a bottle?! I almost forgot, while I was waiting for the table to be ready, I have witness how the “chef” was adding sticky paper tags to the metal caps of each water bottle that will end-up on the tables, I didn’t see how the filled the bottles but I can only guess.

I hope this helped someone decide where to spend at least 40€/person for a Fado dinner.

PS. Read the other review that talks about the dessert bought from the local store...

Music was great. Service was bad. Waiter took 20 minutes to bring us a menu. We finally ordered wine and that took another 15 minutes to bring the bottle.

They put a bunch of food like olives, butter, bread , cheese etc infront of you and say “if you don’t eat it you don’t have to pay”. Well, we didn’t eat the bread and then he tried to charge us. We said “we didn’t eat the bread” and then he said “well, you should tell us before, I always tell customers to tell me”. He quite literally told us the opposite, just to not touch it. Reading the reviews, it seems this is their standard practice. It makes it awkward because I was so hungry when I arrived I didn’t want the food infront of me, but seeing how it took so long to even get the menu, I started nibbling on the food.

Then we asked the waiter if he knew what was inside the pork wine sauce. He said he’d ask because as we stated, my partner has an allergy and we just want to make sure we can share it. We wait for 15 minutes and he’s serving people drinks, cleaning tables, and ignoring me. I finally get up and say hey… did the chef know what it was? The waiter forgot to ask. So, we just sat there hungry for a long time. Waiter then tried to bring us 2x of the same order of pork. I said we didn’t order a second one… mind you this is already after we finished our first pork order. He said “yes you did”. We were so full, and we were already concerned if we could eat the dish, why in gods earth would we order a second one? And then he kept going saying we did and I was so frustrated by him overall I wouldn’t go back. The food was overpriced for the quality as well.

At the end, I was willing to tip, and the singers go around selling their cds.

This is a tourist trap.

It feels overall just a money grab and they nickel and dime you and the waiter kept trying to add on extra charges. Meals are pre cooked. Pork was chewy.

Highly suggest to go other places. The only reason I think the reviews are good because the singers and guitarists were...

I couldn't figure out how to make a reservation online and didn't end up calling to make one, so we went around 7pm. We were seated fine, with a time constraint (asked to finish by 9:15pm, which we should have achieved easily). The main issue we had with the restaurant was that they were very busy and it seemed like they needed more staff. We didn't get our food until after the fado performance, so 1.75 hrs after we sat down. We were already hungry going in, so we weren't feeling great having to wait that long. We did notice that the other tables who sat around the same time as us all had their food before the fado performance. We rushed to finish our food to give the table back at 9:15pm.

There are items laid out on the table when you're seated. If you don't want them (they are charged items), you need to ask the server to take them away. I recommend doing this at the start and to have everything you don't want taken away in one go. Check the bill at the end before paying, to ensure the items were properly removed. There were 2 items that weren't removed because we asked the bartender to take them away when she passed, so the main server didn't know (he missed a couple we said we didn't want the first time). There wasn't an issue though, it was removed.

They asked that we pay in cash, likely to save them the credit card processing fee. Again, not a problem, but it wasn't our preferred method of payment.

Of the food itself, our favourite was the octopus. It had a nice char grilled flavour. The cod was overcooked and tough. The black pork cheeks were good. The clams as a starter were fine - it didn't stand out.

We enjoyed the opportunity to see a fado performance. To note, you're asked not to eat while they're performing (not that we had food), which is maybe a bit odd for an establishment that is a restaurant first (?) and the performance isn't...