Búzio — Restaurant in Sintra

Buzio Restaurant in Sintra does many things well, but not all. You will find ample parking and a walkable location from many hotels near Buzio. The tables are dressed well with crisp linens and the wait staff was very attentive. One thing I loved is the staff did not bother us during our meal, but they were nearby for any needs we had. However, the wait staff did not ask if we wanted the Couvert. They simply set it on the table and walked away. Most servers ask what parts of the Couvert you want, but not here. We set aside the dishes we didn't want and alerted the server. The total of the couvert would have been over 20€ when most restaurants in the nearby Cascais area charge about 10€. We ordered shrimp curry and pawns in garlic sauce. Each dish was 20€ but most dishes on the menu were much more expensive. The rice served with each dish was aromatic with seasonings and herbs. The prawns were very delicious and I really appreciated the addition of pimento, but the dish had too much oil. I noticed other review contributor's photos, and I see the food drowning in pools of oil. That is not good cooking, it is lazy cooking. Lastly, the shrimp curry had many strings of mud veins still attached to the butterflied shrimp...disgusting! All in all, the food was way too expensive for a small town in Portugal. Fresh fish is everywhere and you don't have to spend 40-80€ per person...

I really wanted to love this place. We came a long way just for it. But the service was so chaotic that when our dishes arrived, the experience was very much below expectation. Here’s what happened: I called to make a reservation under my name, but upon arriving, they could not identify it. They sat us anyway, and the setting was very close to a busy street which I personally found overwhelming. The waiting staff looked clearly overworked and sad or perhaps depressed. They were very pushy in asking for our orders, sighing, making it seem as though the kitchen is about to close when there were two more hours before they close. The octopus didn’t taste delicious. My partner said they found the dishes were pretty mediocre in general. I personally found the oysters to be delicious (they came from Peniche, the seaside harbor north by an hour), and the garlic clams to be quite good. The waiter said the spinach was “just cooked in a pan” when in fact if was pureed and cooked with butter and oil, which was quite...

Underwhelming! I love seafood, but unfortunately I couldn’t afford most of the seafood on the menu.

A variety of starters were placed on our table (breads, cheese, olives and pates) which we chose not to eat as we assumed we would be charged. They came and collected the starters after they worked out we didn’t want them, and then simply took the same plates to another table instead, so they were not fresh.

We chose the tuna steaks which came with a rocket salad and French fries. The tuna itself was lovely, with a mustard and bulsamic dressing. The ‘rocket salad’ was just a handful of rocket, and the French fries looked like very thickly cut crisps. They were unseasoned so were very bland, and stuck together as well as to the plate they were served on.

The waiting staff were friendly and spoke Portuguese, English and French that we noticed.

Our meal was averagely priced, but unless you have a large budget for seafood, we probably would...