[Lisbon] Prado restaurant

Regional Dining Discussions Italy, Spain, Portugal
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The interior of the restaurant is beautiful, very modern & spacious with vaulted ceilings & with an abundance of staff.

The menu is split up in bite-sized, not really shareable items (each around 3-5€), then small plates at various prices – all of which are amazingly reasonable for a 1-star Michelin.

They start you off with The Best Bread Of My Life served with olive oil I barely tried bc it comes with WHIPPED, SEASONED LARD. Holy shitballz I could’ve made a meal of that alone!

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We then ordered two each of the golden amberjack, oyster & shiso (the seafood wrapped in the leaf) and the sardine, guanciale, parsley on bread. OMG. The shiso wrap was a beautiful morsel of food, and the sardine bread revelatory.

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We only got one order of the “Minhota” beef tartare, shiitake & grilled cabbage, and the smoked quail egg, marron & cured loin. Good decision. The tartare was very bland, or at least completely overwhelmed by the shiitake flavor, and the smoked yolk just sat on the plate on top of a drop of sauce and covered with what looked like a slice of spicy salami. Meh. Weakest dishes of the night.

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Our ‘mains’ were Iberico pork presa on turnips and turnip tops, and yellowfin tuna belly with seaweed rice and spider crab emulsion. The pork was cooked perfectly MR, but was a bit tougher than I’d expect from the pork equivalent of Wagyu. The tuna belly dish was incredible. A plate of ocean that the two British ladies behind us didn’t like, sent back, and didn’t want to pay for. Ok, Karen. That’s not how that works :wink:

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We were pretty stuffed by then (since I couldn’t stop slathering lardo on the bread), but knew we had to order the highly touted mushroom ice cream. It comes with caramel sauce (lots of it) & pearl barley, the latter of which added absolutely nothing besides the texture of horse feed. The ice cream itself was wonderful – and why wouldn’t it work? Mushrooms and cream are a match made in heaven. We shared a bottle of organic Vinho Verde we didn’t quite enjoy as much as the 1.99€ bottles at the minipreço we keep getting hahaha, a glass each of Nebbiolo for our final dish, and porto as a digestif.

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The bill came to only 139.90€ for everything. A steal. The only thing that left a bit of a bad taste was that the bill said “service not included” – a trick I’ve seen German restaurants pull off when printing the CC receipt for foreigners, i.e. US tourists, presumably hoping for the stateside standard of at least 20%. Uh, no. Service is ALWAYS included, certainly at Michelin places, and generally not expected.

But all in all it was a wonderful experience.

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I"m glad you went to Portugal :+1:

Also check the tax column on the receipt. You get a surprise sometimes (usually much later when you examine the receipt).

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Isn’t service in Portugal trinkgeld/pourboire level, rounding up or 5-10ish %?

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Sounds like a (mostly) amazing meal!! Especially the tuna belly…

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Right. Certainly not enough to justify a special note on the receipt.

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We also loved our lunch at Prado and agree that the bread is fantastic. The gourmet blog, Mesa Marcada, rates the chef as one of Portugal’s very best and the restaurant as well. Both the chef and the restaurant made the number 2 in Portugal spots on the 2021 Mesa Marcada awards list.

We recently encountered the “service is not included” issue not printed on our bill but instead were told this directly by our waiter at Ramiro, who urged us to add a tip on the bill presented on his tablet. We declined and left a small tip in coins on the table instead. In all of our other Lisbon dining we never saw a note of “ service not included”.

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If we ever make it back to Lisbon …

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Yah, it’s pretty sneaky. I used to translate the daily menu for a restaurant in Berlin, and would occasionally eat there. Imagine my surprise when my US friends had the line “service not included” printed on their bill, but strangely none of that BS on mine (I’m German).

F that noise.

But the meals at both places were pretty stellar :slight_smile:

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I have been living in Portugal for 40 years and have never been presented with a bill saying “service not included”. On the other hand, a tip is always expected if you are satisfied with your meal (I usually tip between 5 and 10% , always in cash).
To Presunto: Also check the tax column on the receipt. You get a surprise sometimes (usually much later when you examine the receipt). No restaurant in Portugal would try to cheat on the VAT (that is the tax). The bill / slip you get is directly copied from their cash register to the tax office, so it would be suicidal for the restaurant to play with this. Unless the bill is hand written on the back of an envelope, but even that is getting rare!

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Right. As a German speaking German when I visit German restaurants here in Berlin they’ve never tried to pull that shit on me either. I have, however, witnessed the same places doing that with my American friends (separate checks). It’s pretty fucking rude if you ask me.

Tipping culture in Portugal seems on par with Germany.

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Pedro @PedroPero told me about this place, it’s high on my list now for my and my sister’s May trip to Lisboa…

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Yea, he was the one who originally recommended it. It was a fab meal, as is evident in my post :yum: