It looks cool, but tastes terrible. If I can offer one piece of advice: just don't do it. Look at the photos, imagine what it feels like to drink a bottle of oil and have the feeling of a brick in your stomach, and then just go on with your day.

The siren call of Café Santiago's renowned Francesinha beckoned, a beacon of gastronomy, but little did I know it would lead to a culinary cataclysm. This revered sandwich, a darling of countless travel blogs, proved to be a telltale sign of tourist traps that my party of three, alas, chose to ignore. Instead of finding myself in flavortown, I found myself with a 3000 calorie oneway ticket to cardiovascular disease with no taste reprieve.

We embarked on a journey of indulgence, ordering two of these monstrous creations, visually striking like an architectural masterpiece of gluttony, a grand tower adorned with layers of sauce. In sheer awe of its appearance, we yearned for it to taste as splendid as it looked.

However, this gastronomic marvel fell from grace. Its flavors were an ill-conceived concoction, akin to an ambitious experiment conducted under the influence of an altered state of mind (stoney-baloney if you know what I mean). The Francesinha manifested as an abomination, akin to a mound of sodden cardboard drenched in atherosclerosis, a taste that left us yearning for culinary redemption.

Its impact on the stomach was no less dramatic, leading to an unexpected surrender, my body's visceral response to the monstrous creation. Perhaps the Francesinha finds redemption elsewhere, but this encounter was nothing short of regrettable. Proceed with caution when seduced by its visual charm, for it may indeed taste like a one-way ticket to culinary perdition.

After this fateful encounter, I was left pondering the allure of the Francesinha. Could it be that its towering architecture is merely a façade, a tantalizing mirage for the unsuspecting traveler? I couldn't help but wonder if the person who conceived this sandwich did so in a feverish drug-induced dream, haphazardly tossing every ingredient in the fridge together, all while dancing on the precipice of culinary insanity.

In the end, it became evident that my own culinary sensibilities could not find solace in the Francesinha's chaotic symphony of flavors. It was a sandwich that defied reason, leaving me to seek refuge in the simplicity of traditional Portuguese cuisine. While this experience may serve as a cautionary tale, I can only hope that others may find a more harmonious dining experience, far removed from the realm of culinary misadventure that the Francesinha bestowed upon me.