Vinhas d'Alho — Restaurant in Porto

Unfortunately I have to give this a lower rating because of the inconsistency of the food, the menu itself and the service.

While pleasant, I found the service staff to be poor. Drinks came out in spurts, with a beer being completely forgotten until we reminded them. Servers running into each other and not one server couldn’t answer the simplest question about the menu.

It’s great that there is some Portuguese soul left in the naming on the menu (IE untranslated names) the staff should be able to explain what it is. We both had to Google certain aspects of our meals prior to ordering. This lead to confusion and expectations of the food differing from reality.

Which leads me to the food. A nice bread tray and delicious soft cheese is placed right away, but be warned this will cost you about 6Euro, but is worth it. They also had a complimentary white Port spritzer.

We had a summer salad that was a collection of salad greens and fruit. Tasty but nothing special.

I had a fried golden sea bass with lobster sauce beneath with sea asparagus. This was the first part where I was confused and the server couldn’t answer what the sauce actually was prior to ordering. It turned out to be the insides of lobster with flour and stock. Tasty, but needs to be better explained as anything with lobster increases the price. There is no lobster meat in this dish, just offal. The searing on the fish was also poor. Skin was crispy in spots and then chewy in others, the fish was also over cooked and dried out.

My wife had a fried cod with purée of chickpea and supposedly grilled sausage. Again, her fish was poorly cooked and there was no sausage in there. The server didn’t understand what we were asking about the dish and just sort of wandered off. Shame as the balance of the dish was off without any char or flavouring from the sausage.

I skipped desert as nothing jumped off the page at me. My wife had the “conventional custard tart with tawny port”. She really liked it and I appreciated the whimsy and plating of it. It looked like it was executed well with a tasty meringue, crisp tuile. Accompanied by a nutty tawny port it should have capped off a good meal.

3/5, I...

I don’t usually post reviews, but I’ve never been this disrespected in my entire life. During the break of the live performance I said something to my friend sitting next to me. The host/owner/old men came over and told us to “shut up” and turns to the table next to us and in Spanish says that we have no civilization or culture that’s why we behave like this...

Let this sink in for a second...

First of all if you were going to say something this racist I would have appreciated if you did it to my face, but I guess that’s not what cowards do.

After the end of the performance I went up to the host thinking it must have been a misunderstanding and wanted to speak to him to clear the situation up. First of all there was no remorse at all. I asked if his actions and words were acceptable and he said they were! This is when the old lady host who also sang stepped in and lectured us that because of our low culture and civilation we don’t understand how to stay shut.

When my other friend stepped in to ask about the situation, they told her the same thing but to her she said “if you want to me to say sorry I will say it to you only” her being a blond Finnish girl while the rest of our group were of Asian ethnicity. She than turns to me to further educate me on my low culture and civilization. At this point she also asks about my education inferring that I did not recieve one. When I asked of hers of course she does not answer. She closed her argument by saying how she was a school teacher and she knows how to handle children... I truly feel sorry for all the kids that received her “education”.

The waiters around were very nice and seemed like they were truly sorry of what was happening, but given the lady was the owner they couldn’t do much.

Overall the rudest and most direspectful experience I’ve ever received in my life. She is cruel, wicked and overall a really nasty human being.

Oh and the food was mediocre: salty, overly cooked, really not enjoyable.

If you want to experiene an old wicked lady’s racist rant go ahead, otherwise stay far far away from...

Our meal experience was atrocious. It was so bad it was funny. The place has a nice atmosphere and you expect a slightly elevated experience. The menu looked good AND our hotel had recommended it. So... We arrive and choose our seat. There's one other couple and one man dining alone who we decide must be the owner as he is directing staff and interacting with the other couple. Our server is very sweet but clearly knows nothing about what to suggest from the red wine list. We order wine and our meals from the badly formatted and very crumpled menu.(I almost left from the menu alone It was a harbinger of things to come.) Then, Metallica comes on the sound system. We laugh, it's early in the evening and someone must have forgotten to change the playlist - surely someone will notice. Nope. Second Metallica song comes on, complete with ads, like they haven't paid for the premium Spotify or whatever service they're using. We ask if they can change the music.(Look, I'm cool with Metallica but not at dinner.) Meal comes, one dish is not what was ordered. Server takes both plates away and my grilled sole goes under a heat lamp somewhere. Wine is okay, still water we ordered is sparkling. Food comes back pretty quickly. It's fine, not great - my fish is a bit overcooked, potatoes are cold and the broccoli is mushy and ridiculously salty but for the price it's not a big deal. It's a paper plate, beachside fish fry kind of a meal. Duck confit is okay. Nice idea, poorly executed. It happens. THEN the owner starts playing a video pretty loudly on his phone. Dude, really? We start to laugh at this point. Any one of these things was not a big deal on it's own but collectively it was pretty bad. Like, no awareness of the customer experience.The staff were all very nice but they stood around ( again, it was early and not yet busy) lurking the 2 tables and my husband said he felt like spawning salmon with an eagle circling overhead. Needless to say, we skipped dessert. I don't know how they have such good reviews. Of all the places we could...