Lusitania — Restaurant in Portimão

BEYOND POOR. Absolutely diabolical. To be avoided, even if it's the last eatery open. FYI this place is owned by KFC (yes the American fast food chicken joint). We got off to a bad start having booked a table by the window the previous day only to be denied that table in favour of another in the back of the restaurant 'because those tables are booked up for birthdays for the next couple of days'. Right, yeah... Anyway we ordered two sets of bruschetta to start, one standard tomato bruschetta which was pretty basic and on fairly average to poor toastada. My octopus version was horrendous, tasting only of mayonnaise. I could not have done octopus a worse dis-service if I had tried. The mains were even worse, and something you would only expect out of a devils kitchen; the advertised fresh tuna was very evidently frozen making it taste fairly bland and losing any and all texture it once had. What's worse, it was served with a very strange pimientos style overpowering, soil flavoured sauce, complete yuck. My wife's monkfish was not much better, which had the most bizarre sauce accompaniment of a mango coulis type thing you'd only ever expect to find over an ice cream or in a gnarly tasting oversweet cocktail. Also came with apples, oranges, cucumber, something resembling a pile of black rice, and a large serving of instant regret for ever considering this restaurant in the first place. KFC would have been...

THE BEST LAMB I'VE EVER HAD. Ive eaten in 100s of restaurants in my time as we are a foody family. We went mid to late afternoon and the restaurant wasn't too busy. Service was, polite, prompt and friendly. Garlic prawns, bruschetta and beef carpaccio, as starters and the prawns not over cooked and garlic sauce perfect. Beef perfectly sliced as thin as possible (how it should be) and bruschetta crisp, juicy and full of flavour. Now for the mains. Lamb cutlets cooked (medium) to PERFECTION! I've never had lamb so tender and perfectly trimmed, and I've eaten alot of lamb. My compliments were given to the chef.

Seafood tagliatelle again very certain the pasta was freshly made and all the seafood not overcooked.

Seafood Kebab Again full of flavour and not over cooked like some of the other restaurants seem to do.

Desserts again delicious.

The portion sizes for the starters, mains and desserts were what you expect, and we all left full and contented.

If your looking for a restaurant that has individual menu full of flavour and combinations that work perfectly, try Lusitania. If you want bland boring food that's the same as everywhere else go...

Service is very slow. You can expect 1h30-2h00 to be served…Basically, just a tourist trap.If you notice all reviews that in their majority are written by non-Portuguese tourists across all platforms you’ll notice a much more positive experience being reported: simply because it is a business strategy - which was evident during our presence there. They treat foreign tourists far better and in a discriminatory fashion provided they rather have a target audience that has larger purchasing power than the Portuguese since they are just expecting your very very large tips…Don’t sponsor such practices please!!…they treat others rudely and that is not ok. Also, note that it’s the first restaurant I’ve ever seen in a costal area serving FROZEN fish, which is a true embarrassment… and you are paying price of top-notch fish and seafood. An example: the starter dish of octopus is frozen octopus, for example. All around the same street you’ll be served purely fresh fish so don’t expect this one to be the “typical” Portuguese...