Tongobriga Restaurante — Restaurant in Marco de Canaveses

A small edit: all of these happened in my birthday dinner with my wife😔. It’s been a long time that I am giving a solid 1-star to a restaurant with a peace of mind. Let me tell you why: We ordered the pork belly as the starter, and asked the waiter if there is not enough for one portion, we can get the mozzarella with presunto. At the end, the waiter brought us a portion of OCTOPUS.

I personally do not like octopus, and told the waiter immediately. He told us that he will bring the mozzarella, but it never happened. He kept bringing us bread to dip it to the sauce of octopus.

We wanted a suggestion of wine from the waiter, he told us he would give us a white wine, it was verde (green). We like verde wine but when we asked about it, he did not even respond and told that it is white wine.

I ordered a ribeye steak, but you know what, after all of these ridiculous things, he just brought my order without even asking “how would you like your meat?”. I like it very different than they brought, but I was too tired of trying to explain myself. Tried to eat it.

When we ordered the check, we saw that there is octopus. We told the waiter that we do not want to pay for the octopus because it was a mistake, he just removed the octopus and placed the mozzarella in the check that we could not even see how it looks like. But we paid for it anyway.

I am sorry to say that but we have gone through a very different experience than these entire people who wrote wonderful comments about this restaurant. To be honest, it was by far the WORST restaurant that I have been for...

Unfortunately we had an unpleasant experience in this restaurant and despite of all the good reviews, we were really disappointed 😔 first of all, we have ordered porco for starters and they said they were out (which is ok) then we said okay then can we have the mozzarella toast? Instead he brought us polvo and when we told him that my husband doesn’t like polvo and we ordered the mozzarella toast, he told him to dip his bread in the oil and brought us not so fresh bread. 🍞 afterwards, I canceled my risotto since the polvo and bread made me so full and now it was my husbands time to eat so yeah we didn’t dine together under the circumstances. He ordered meat which they didn’t ask about the cooking preference and brought rare whilst he eats medium well. In the end, when the check came, he put the polvo there which 13 euros and the mozzarella toast we ordered was only 5.5. We asked him to correct it and thankfully, he did. So in the end, I ate a lot of bread and octopus for dinner and my husband ate a meat he didnt like and we only travelled to the area for his birthday so it was really sad how this went. Maybe it was our bad luck, I dont know but the restaurant really needs to work on service and customer...

Excelente!! Ambiente, comida, serviço extremamente simpático. O chefe Paulo Mota confeciona tudo com esmero e paixão, integrado num conceito muito interessante e impar no Marco de Canaveses, onde se pode escolher entre diferentes acompanhamentos. Um exemplo de como a cozinha pode ser requintada sem ser parca e excessivamente rebuscada. Privilegiando os produtos frescos e sempre que possível locais. Aconselho o que comi e provei, o Entrecôte, farto, no ponto e muito saboroso, que eu acompanhei com os excelentes e igualmente fartos Ovos Rotos; a Espetada de Tamboril também no ponto, exemplarmente temperada, acompanhada de um excelente arroz de gambas; o Espeto de Novilho, mais uma vez carne muito saborosa acompanhada de um Duo de Batatas (doces e outras) acabadas de fritar e muito boas acompanhadas de uma apropriada maionese de Bacon. No panorama das gulodices, comemos o Creme de Leite, queimadinho e saboroso, mas destaco o Tiramissu de Biscoito da Teixeira, uma combinação divertida, que resulta numa saborosa sobremesa equilibrada e não demasiado doce. Não podia deixar de voltar a destacar a simpatia do pessoal, em especial do chefe Paulo Mota, que simpaticamente fez questão de vir à mesa receber a opinião da refeição, e com quem tive agradável conversa sobre vários temas incluindo excitantes projetos futuros, que a concretizar vão dar uma merecida projeção à histórica zona do Freixo, para mim talvez a mais bonita é interessante do conselho. Experiência gastronómica certamente a repetir! Aconcelho também a visita às belíssimas ruínas romanas e...