The Adega Tipica restaurant is a little eight table place that features Fado (Portugese traditional blues) on Friday nights. It had a nice atmosphere at the beginning of the evening.
We were given a little chicken pot pie appetizer, because we were waiting so long (more on that later). My wife had the kebab of pork (tough), and potatoes.
I had the clams and pork and the tastes do go well together.
This restaurant does leave a bad taste in my mouth for two reasons. The first is that service was extremely slow and by extremely slow, I mean that the cook did not show up until we were there for twenty minutes and even though we were the only people there for an hour and a half we were there for two hours. The second is that fifteen minutes before the fado, we were done our meal and wanted to pay our bill and leave as we were driving the next day. The waitress was very surprised that we were not staying for the fado and was insisting we stay. We emphatic declined and said we wanted our bill. Ten minutes later the band is just starting to play (five minutes earlier than listed) and she wooshes by, puts the bill on our table and leaves to go to the washroom. It had a 10 Euro fado charge on it and the chicken pot pie appetizer that we were told was for waiting so long at the beginning of our meal, was charged to us. I should have made more of a stink but I was really angry and it would not have made a good scene.
This leads me to one thing that I did not like about the restaurants we were in throughout Portugal but is fine if you know in advance. If they put anything on your table that you do not ask for, you will be charged for it: bread, olives, sardine pate, cheese, appetizer sized dishes...everything. Most of the time it is a euro or two, nothing obscene. It is aggravating though if you do not expect it.
oh bummer.... yeah, that is a very portuguese thing placing things on the table and charging for them. I though that in the last few years they had changed that behaviour, but I guess not in all places. I did notice last time we were there that they were being more careful about that as there had been some complaints at the tourism bureaus. I am so used to it that I don't notice it, like the couvert in French Restaurants, but still, they shouldn't charge you for something you didn't order. So you never got to listen to the fado then....
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