All good questions, @erica1, which I will attempt to address, because this is one thread on which it’s probably okay to go a little off-topic.
Re oysters: looking back on my episodes of food poisoning, a disproportionate number of them involved oysters. Of course there are other ways to get it, even when the tap water is safe to drink: poorly-washed salads, starters left at room temperature too long, cross-contamination. But as long as we continue with the assumption that the ocean (or the local river) is so big that it doesn’t matter what we put into it, it’s going to get less and less safe to eat oysters. Alas.
Re Ramiro: we were seated a little to the left inside the entrance, on the route from the bar / kitchen pickup point to the dining area on the right. Service was perfunctory to the point of being rude. Our experience in Lisbon is that service can be efficient but usually there is a minimum level of respect. We were handed an English menu on a tablet that was quite minimal: “shrimp”, “clams”, etc. The oysters did not have the adductor muscle severed, so we had to dig at them with standard unsharp tableware; there were shell fragments inside; and, of course, I got sick (not my partner). We had expected the shelled sauteed shrimp we saw at another table, but we got steamed shrimp that were overcooked. The clams (standard Bulhāo Pato prep) were all right. I’ve had better seafood in Lisbon while spending less, and atmosphere was about zero (noisy, people pressing by or servers rushing back and forth).
Re Lisbon food, Portuguese food in general: I have done a little travel in Portugal but not a lot, and probably a little more in Spain. When we moved to Lisbon, we were still not dining indoors, and we were more focussed on getting our lives in order and learning how to function, so we didn’t do a lot of eating out. I think we tend to eat more downscale than you do. All these are caveats for my basically agreeing with you, that Spanish food seems more varied and more interesting. Of course Spain is a much larger country, has a more robust economy, and historically was much more powerful. Portugal has access to good fresh seafood, and prepares it simply, for the most part. The cuisine is more El Pisto than Noor, if that makes sense. I bought a comprehensive Portuguese cookbook in 1989 and kept it (mostly as a cultural document) until just a couple of years before moving to Lisbon became a possibility (I wish I had it now). It had dozens of bacalhau recipes, but they were largely variations on the same theme, not very surprising. In the dessert section, there were dozens of variations on egg yolks cooked with sugar, simple cakes with dried fruits, and so on. The wine is quite good for my personal everyday sipping, and they don’t make a fuss over it. What I read about fine dining seems rather forced to me. The average visitor can eat well at modest cost; the average Hungry Onion poster might find things a little too ordinary.
