Cruel Restaurante — Restaurant in Porto

(This restaurant made our last night in Porto a great experience!)

CRUEL is situated in "old town" Porto, and we were cautious about experimenting with this restaurant as we did not know what to expect (we wanted to avoid tourist traps by all means). We were hesitant at first, but after ten minutes of staring at the "exotic-looking" menu in the window, the couple sat inside turned around and gave us the thumbs up for the food, so we gathered the courage and went in.

The atmosphere was cool, ambient and friendly. The staff was extremely personable, charming and accommodating, and gave us a little intro into the concept of the restaurant in the beginning, which was by no means an everyday one.

There are three different types of menus to choose from, and depending on which "label" you select, you will be presented with choices ranging from "Fearful" through "Cautious" to "Cruel". Naturally you can mix and match the dishes so there is no pressure to go for something you don't fancy.

The flavours were really nice, interesting, unusual, and totally satisfying. The portions were pretty decent too, as we ended up sharing two small dishes and one large one, with one dessert and we were stuffed. Selection of drinks & food were both decent, suitable for both meat eaters, fish lovers, vegetarians and vegans and the prices were completely fair too.

Overall, I loved the restaurant and I am hoping to return soon to try something new. 100% recommended.

(Ps. The magic mushroom risotto was...

I really liked the beef taretare but mains was alittle disappointment the same goes for the customer service. It was great at the beginning, then fall back once main came out. Towards the end when we wanted to pay , It was very hard to get our Waiter's attention after many attempts, even with eye contact, it still didn't work...

The menu concept was really quite interesting, which is why we came to this restaurant to begin with but only 1 dish amazed us.

Mains, we had the rump steak 1000 peppers, magic mushroom and starter doughnuts with wasabi and salmon mousse.

Review on food: Magic mushroom became a little sickening to finish due to its large portion, doughnuts were dry and the salmon filling didn't help with the balance of moisture, rump steak it had too many onions and cracked black peppers on 1 plate, I didn't except them to have so many cracked peppers, I assume it was a play on words since the restaurant concept was unique. But no, they actually meant 1000 cracked peppers... it was too overpowering and peppery you could no longer enjoy the steak, I couldn't finish the steak unfortunately.

Beef tare tare was really delicious because it was different from any other tare tare we've had before, each bite had a new taste which was amazing. It came with a tiny bottle of whisky on the side to sip along side...

Had really high hopes for this place but nothing was fine. It had so much potential with a creative concept of different menus depending on how spicey you liked your food but sad to say nothing had any spice, even the ‘cruelest’ options. I think you know you didn’t like any of your food when: the bread and dips to start were the star of the show, and even then the ‘miso honey butter’ had no taste of miso in. We started with my French partners favourite starter of fois gras, and what was to come could only be described as distasteful. A fois gras… in the mould of a rubber duck… in a plastic bathtub surrounded by a cherry glaze. This accompanied by crackers to go with your fois gras… Accompanying this starter was their carpaccio. The meat was ok, but the concept of eating the pollen of a flower before we ate the meat made our tongues go numb? Was not a pleasant experience at all. We then ordered the cod, which the quality we couldn’t fault and was genuinely very tasty, however it was partnered with what I can only describe as bread that had been chewed up and spat out, watery and mushy bread was very off putting. All accompanied by a not very nice white wine. I can imagine this place doing really well just needs to work on presentation and bringing the flavour more, sorry guys. The waitress who served us was...