Mar à Vista — Restaurant in Vila Nova de Gaia

This restaurant is located right by the sea, and for the view alone, it's a beautiful spot. It's hard to say whether it's a seasonal place or more of a local favorite, but when we visited for dinner it started getting crowded pretty fast.

Staff was extremely attentive, welcoming and professional.

Toilets were clean in general.

However, if you go at night, keep in mind that the beach isn't properly "lit", so you won't really be able to see the sea while you eat.

As for the food, I found it to be quite average. The quality is not high — the fries tasted like they were bland, or frozen, and most of the fried dishes looked processed. I appreciated that there were vegetarian options (about 3), but unfortunately, the one I chose was disappointing: four spring rolls with a basic salad for 13€. The spring rolls were extremely dry, tough to eat, lacked flavor, and had almost no filling — 75% of the roll was just the dough.

Regarding the rest of the dishes, it was a mixed experience. Some items like the octopus looked much better and were nicely cooked, with delicious roasted potatoes on the side. The seafood soup also got decent feedback. But again, it was strange to see a combination of freshly cooked items alongside others that seemed straight out of the freezer.

The desserts were Carte D'or, which was disappointing for a restaurant in such a nice location. The coffee was very basic too.

Overall, it feels like the focus here is more on the location and the view than the food quality. Given the prices, I would expect much better — I wouldn't mind paying this much at a restaurant offering fresh traditional food, but here it just didn’t...

Literally the worst food I ever had. We ordered cod fillet and seafood rice. Fish was so oversaulted and tasted like a resin. My kids would cook better. Seafood rice smelled like it was never washed, smelled the sea really. Could not eat at all. What was supposed to be marinated onion, was just chopped fresh onion thrown on top of the fish. The only good thing was couple of potatoes on a side of the fish. Thanks God for wine, otherwise it would be a complete disaster. However had to clean the wine glasses myself using a napkin, as there were stains of dishsoap all over them. Very disappointed, do not recommend. Pros: Location is great, view on the ocean. The...

Non existent service, food and wine were good hence the 2 stars. We got there 10 minutes before the restaurant opened and handed one menu between the two of us. Not asked if we would like a drink while waiting, not offered bread and olives like they do in all the other places we have been to in Porto. Felt like we were intruding on the waiters' time. We could have spent more money but felt so unwelcome we left without...