Tia Tia restaurant — Restaurant in Porto

I have much to say about this restaurant. It took over an hour and a half for them to serve three “tapas” style dishes with minuscule portions of prepped food—prepped as in, the ingredients should have been already prepared. We ordered the charred cauliflower, pineapples with “spicy granola”, and “catch of the day” along side some bread and a bottle of wine. None of the aforementioned foods needed attentive cooking, evident from the charred yet cold cauliflower, glorified pineapple granola yogurt smeared on a plate, and horrible textured, nerves-and-muscles-of-the-fish attached fish crudo with carrots. Every sad excuse of a dish took 30 minutes to serve, and took at most 2 minutes to eat. The staff of two were keeping “busy” opening every single drawer in the seating space and rearranging menus by color coordination every five minutes and made the excuse that their chef is working alone in the kitchen while the dishwasher who “had a cut on his finger” didn’t show up to work for ten days, causing the chef to both “cook” and clean. The workings and labor of kitchen experience is not new to me, and I question why the servers who were doing not much of anything didn’t go to help with the dishes to move the service along more smoothly. Reviews from ten months ago note the slowness of service and levels of exasperation close to mine. It shows that this kitchen and staff have not worked to ameliorate the critiques they have received—it takes time and labor to write a review like this and I hope it relays just how disappointed and baffled I was at our dining experience. My party of three had made a reservation days earlier for this spot and once we arrived, we saw four tables of stiffened faces and tired guests without food—only now we know that it was because they had been waiting long before we even arrived. Who knows how long they waited for their food. When we asked for the check early to just head to another restaurant, the staff insisted our food was coming “within minutes”. It did not come in minutes, and we truly wasted our time, money, spirits, appetite, and appreciation for cuisine in porto as we are traveling. Truly unfathomable, and I never thought that I would be posting such a negative review in my life, especially during such a pleasant travel experience....

The atmosphere felt a bit strange at first with some eery music at times, sometimes not. We felt like we were in someone’s living room (no one wearing a uniform or at least an apron maybe) which is actually consistent with the experience we got, but not the price we paid.

They only have one person in the kitchen, which doesn’t make any sense as we were around 30 pax during that service, and you could see most of the tables without food half of the time.

We took all the dishes to share, except the fish of the day and the dessert, knowing they recommend 4 dishes for 2 persons, so that’s what we had (and sourdough bread).

I do appreciate the fact they use local products, that the plating was nice, and taste wise, it was decent, but nothing amazing too. The problem was that each dish is like an appetizer or a small starter (with a twist), and also that the pricing is neither matching the portion or the products.

What adds to the frustration is that you’re waiting 20min between each tiny dish that you will finish in 2min, and that doesn’t fill you up, and that you won’t even remember at the end of the meal.

I rarely review negatively but have to say it was one of our worst experience in a restaurant. We spent 2h30, almost 100e (we also had one bottle of wine, one extra glass and sparkling water) and unfortunately our last night in Porto there.

Many reviews are describing the exact same experience so maybe they don’t want to address these constructive feedbacks, and think they know better.

Being from hospitality, I know how harsh it is. Do things right, or...

Good presentation, but Slowwwww, getting one dish at a time taking two plus hours for two people. And that was immediately asking for the bill when our main dish finally arrived.

When I remarked on this to our server, she exclaimed "Well, you know it's only two of us'. Yes, she is the only person on the floor, and the chef (also dishwasher) is the only person in the kitchen. That's not my problem. Hire a helper for both areas. My wife and I do not expect to wait 20/30+ minutes for 1 dish to be served at a time, when we order our entire dinner, after a 30 minute wait upon entering the restaurant. Even with the cold dishes served, we had to wait 25 minutes!!

Food presentation was good. Flavor was good, but there was too much creamy sauce on every dish. Portion size was small, and this mot a good value dinner.

This is a tiny restaurant with 3 appetizer vegetarian dishes, and two fish dishes (one served cold, for which we still had to wait 25 minutes).

There are a possible 24 diners at one time, and certainly needs more preparation and assistance.

The reviews on a reservation website lured me here, which I must not surmise were not genuine, and going forward I will have do a more thorough job of validation through...