Bulha Sá da Bandeira — Restaurant in Porto

Went here and was one of only three tables, slow night to start.

I ordered sangria and a veggie burger with some fried vegetables. Glacially slow to receive my sangria and fried vegetables. I asked for hot sauce and they brought me a bunch of mayonnaise packets. I asked again for hot sauce and got a tiny tincture with a few drops in it.

Flash forward an entire 45 minutes, I still had not received my veggie burger; I assumed they entirely forgot to put an order in for the burger and I was willing to forget about it in order to leave. I asked for the check and the waiter made it seem like I was trying to dash out without paying for the burger. I was sort of insulted by this. I asked for the burger to go, hoping they had at least started on cooking it. It came out a few minutes later. The waiter then made several comments to not forget my bags I had brought with me that were sitting on the table. Very strange interaction. I still tipped generously and the waiter seemed indifferent to that.

At this point the restaurant was chaotically slammed busy, several other tables were waiting extremely long to get food, and people were returning food to the kitchen. One table next to me returned their entire meal, I’m not sure what the issue was but they looked disgusted by it. It was very stressful and unpleasant in the restaurant.

I would strongly recommend against...

I was all excited to visit after reading many positive reviews. The food is decent; I like the seafood rice a lot as the restaurant is quite generous with the amount of shrimps and clams they serve to customers. The cod fritters are, however, lacking favors but to be fair, I am unsure what good cod fritters should taste like as I never had them before.

What I don't appreciate is one of the workers there. She's unfriendly and impatient from the very beginning. When I asked for the tab, she rudely threw the bill on the table, which is shocking. Perhaps she was just having a bad day due to being underpaid? But she was all smily to other WHITE customers and asked how they liked their foods. As the only Asian face in the restaurant, I kind of got what was happening with that lousy waitress.

This is the only restaurant in Porto at which I didn't tip the worker. She didn't deserve a penny for her SERVICE (if there's any). If she's a regular worker, the owner should seriously consider letting her go. If she's somehow related to the place (many customers remarked that this is a family business), I feel sorry it's in the future hand of some silly daughter who doesn't know or care for the basics of hospitality business: you don't pick and choose who to smile at based on the...

The Francesinha is really good, very filling, but the service, at least on the night I was there, was horrible. I ordered a drink, but 20 minutes later, another waitress stopped by to apologize but they ran out of ice and my waiter had to go get more. huh???

I ordered the marinated olives as a starter because the menu picture showed it came with hummus and bread, but all I got were olives. So the same waitress noticed I had no bread and apologized and brought bread.

My waiter returned (presumably with the ice), walked over to my table and took away my bread plate with no explanation. While I was eating the bread (because now I had been there over 40 minutes with no food or drink)

Finally I got the Francesinha, which yes was good, but sheesh, idk how there could be so many misses in the service, and no apologies from my waiter, no offer of a free espresso or anything to make up for the comedy of errors.

I hope this is just an anomaly because there are so many other good reviews, but I...