Restaurante Lage Senhor do Padrão — Restaurant in Matosinhos

Delicious, generous portion, fast service, and very reasonably priced, I can see why people line up to eat here. For lunch, I ordered the whelk salad, sautéed shrimp in house sauce, grilled sardine, and a small bottle of vinho verde (ponte de Lima). I’m dining alone, but these are more than enough for two people. I can barely finish half of the meal, and had to packed the rest for my partner. The Ponte de Lima wine is a medium green wine: not too dry, not to sweet, not to fizzy. Exactly what I needed to accompany a table of seafood.

The dishes all have nice flavours, but both the shrimp and the whelk are too salty. The whelk salad is bathed in generous amount of olive oil and topped with cilantro and onion. A refreshing combination. The whelk chunks are not too tough, which is a common cooking mistake you find at most restaurants. The shrimp is sautéed in house sauce, which is a sweet garlic chilly sauce with cilantro.

The grilled sardines come with cilantro garlic baby potatoes on the side. For me, this dish is the star of the show. Because of the end of fishing season. I haven’t had the chance to try fresh sardines in Portugal. Today, on my last day in Porto, I get to taste this Portuguese national dish for the first time at this restaurant. And absolutely delicious! Like many reviews mentioned before me: these sardines are grilled and seasoned to perfection. What a nice way to end my Porto culinary journey!

A tip to beat the line up: come at the beginning of the restaurant’s opening hour. I arrived ~20min past the start of the lunch hour. While half of the dinning hall is already full, I was able to get a seat right away. Soon after I got seated, I noticed the dining hall has already become packed, and there is a...

If there is an opportunity for me to give 6/5 I will wholeheartedly give it to this restaurant. I don't do this often but when my wife and I came out of the dinner, we were so happy with the overall experience.

We had a great culinary experience in Portugal overall and the best food we ever had was at this restaurante Lage Senhor do Padrao. This place deserves the best reviews for the sheer variety of authentic Portuguese fare, great taste and quality ingredients they have.

This place is mostly frequented by the locals and of all the restaurants we saw in Matosinhos, this one had a long line of customers waiting outside for a table, showing how popular it is. Initially the staff said a wait time of 50 minutes but they got us a table in 25 minutes and that was a big relief. Nonetheless for the experience we had I would have gladly waited an hour, and if you have read my previous reviews you would know I don't like to wait for more than 30 minutes.

Anyways I went in hoping to order their whole fish, preferably the turbot, by the kilogram rate, which will be grilled with salt and olive oil. I didn't find it on the menu and on asking the staff they showed me the fish and mentioned it is an expensive fish. As we wanted to indulge a bit we gladly agreed. The fish came with three sides that we can choose. We also ordered the caldo Verde soup and octopus salad, which were great too.

In short, this place is worth visiting again and if we do come to Porto again I will travel all the way to Matosinhos just to eat at this restaurant. That's how much I am impressed by...

Underwhelming!! I really, really wanted to like this place, but the food just wasn't very good. The service was good, food presentation was nice and the inside of the place was pretty. But the food was just not that good. The fish soup was salty, octopus salad didn't seem fresh. The octopus was rubbery and really had no flavor even though it was smothered in onions and olive oil. The monk fish rice tomato sauce was so bland and the rice was crunchy, the fish wasn't bad though. The sangria was very plain too ( tasted like the local grocery store bottle with some chopped fruit in it). Even the bread was just mediocre. Thankfully it wasn't terribly expensive! One other thing that isn't a huge deal; but even the type of chairs that were used for outside dining were horribly loud when trying to sit.

Overall, NOT a great experience.

At least the sunset was nice when I walked to Foz on the boardwalk before heading home so the evening wasn't...