A Marisqueira de Matosinhos — Restaurant in Matosinhos

I must admit I was apprehensive in deciding to visit this place after reading the reviews. In the end, we went ahead anyway. The place was easy to locate using google map. The restaurant is fancy. We could see the proprietor taking good care of his regular clientele who were equally fancy. I thought he was polite enough to us when he caught me observing him around the room. From a distance, he lifted his brow and a smile to ask if I was okay and I gave him a thumbs up.

The 2 waiters who helped us may have been slightly uncomfortable especially when one of them do not speak much English. So we tried to be concise and simple in our choice. My partner and I ordered a Sapateira crab, lobster rice, a piece of ice cream cake, a large bottled water and a half bottle of white wine. Had I been able to speak Portuguese I could see myself go totally crazy with my order as I saw a lot of interesting options.

They placed a plate of bread on our table that I politely declined which they removed in kind. (I was not there to eat bread). No trouble there at all.

Coming from Asia, we don’t get Sapateira and I was dying to try. The 1.3kg crab was delicious and fresh. Although I was hoping to get one with roe but I did not know how to tell the waiter to pick a female one so I settled for the one given to me. I later saw the table of regulars next to us have the same one.

The lobster rice I found it slightly salty but the €90 dish came in a sizable pot with large chunks of lobsters meat that we couldn’t finish and had to take leftovers to go.

The white wine recommended to us was fantastic and for the best value. (€5.50 for half bottle).This was by far my favourite white wine ever (besides that time I tried a white wine by Flowers in California at a much higher price point).

The bill came to €168 which I thought was good value and nothing like those horrid stories I read online. I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to get into a police situation in an establishment like this. That must have been awkward for all parties. If I was a sensitive man, I could read into the manner in which the waiter threw my credit card back to me after pay waved but I chalked that off to their culture (you know? kind of like how Italians says “Bellissimo”).

Overall, i would hope to someday visit this place again with a local/regular who knows how to order. The full experience I am sure would have been more fun. Somehow, this visit left me feeling like I just attended a friend’s family party - yes I showed up, greeted by the busy host from afar, observed on the side, had some food but not really tasted the mom’s specialty nor stayed long enough for the cake...

My husband and I are on vacation and were recommended to come here from our Airbnb host as they said we had to have seafood at Matosinhos. I was able to call and make a reservation the night before, which they graciously accepted. Upon arrival, it took 3 people to speak with us, all of them seemingly surprised it was us who reserved. But they told us to give them 10 minutes to prepare our table. We ended up waiting about half an hour before my husband went up to ask what was going on. Meanwhile, a few other groups were able to walk in and were seated immediately. I’m not sure why but I think because the place is a bit more high-end and we were the only young couple there (it’s mostly older couples, businessmen, and families), I feel like they went out of their way to make us feel out of place. We were sat and our table wasn’t even ready with napkins or cutlery, and I had to ask them for the wine list. The cost was never an issue for us, but I felt judged the entire time. This experience completely put us off from the rest of dinner, which sadly was quite good. I wish we could have enjoyed it more. If you do come to eat here, I can recommend the crab dish and the...

We were so excited to have seafood in Porto and we waited until our last evening here to enjoy it.

I am a big fan of octopus and only one dish had it, I decided for it. It was awful! The octopus rice was almost cold (God knows when it was made).

The shrimps (that was actually an appetizer) were pretty good but the octopus dish with rice was awful.

I have to admit I was mesmerized to this place by the pictures of other customers, but I wouldn’t recommend this restaurant to anyone.

Plus we were charged for some side bread that we didn’t ordered - and we assumed it was complimentary.

Also, as we were planning to eat something fast and then go catch the sunset we didn’t want to drink anything. The waiter insisted to bring us water - which again sounded to be on the house... it’s not about the 5€ extra we paid, but for the idea itself.

The waiter was pretty nice but still the food was a bad experience.

Sorry - I couldn’t waited to leave a good review and explain how good the food was -...