Rob's Ribs: Lisbon

Well, it's been a long month hasn't it. Not very much happened really apart from a week's business trip to Lisbon. Usually these trips are fairly hedonistic in nature involving an outrageous amount of drinking, eating and hangovers. But not this year. This year I was good and severely limited my intake to one alcoholic beverage per day, due in the main to this:

www.toughmudder.co.uk

I will soon be finding exactly how much mettle I can maintain, but until that happens, let's talk Lisbon. Primarily the week consisted of buffet breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Not incredibly inspiring I think you'll agree. The best part of which was the little private giggle I had every time we got to desert, perhaps not everything translates as expected:

The highlight of the week was supposed to be our company trip out to Bica do Sapato, a restaurant with a serious reputation. With John Malkovich was patron, this is a celeb heavy establishment with chefs coming with multiple michelin starred histories. But I'm afraid that all this was for naught. I have significant sympathy for the kitchen to cater for 50 hungry people at the same time but the menu was I'm afraid, just very dull.

For example, we first had some white goo.

This, after some deliberation, was decided to be some kind of creamy cauliflower sauce. Not exactly a taste explosion. Under the goo, we were promised salt cod, which I understand is a speciality of the area. Perhaps there was a shortage, perhaps the kitchen made a mistake or perhaps they actually intended to replace the salt cod with chickpeas but in any event it wasn't pleasant and there wasn't much cod. The green ring around the outside was basil oil by the way. Yes, I thought that was odd too.

My main choice was pig cheek stew. The pork had been stewed down well and pulled apart easily, the mash was... mash. But the salt content was high, so high in fact that others on my table refused to eat theirs at all. All in all, bad, bad, bad.

We were all glad to get on to the puds and I had a Frey Bentos tin put down in front of me. On further examination, the lid revealed a lemon creme brulee which was actually pretty nice, but I would have certainly preferred a thicker caramel top. By the look of the website this restaurant would have charged us an absolute fortune for the evening but I'm afraid it was lost on me. Waiting staff were attentive and pleasant, the decor was painfully modern, complete with miss matching chairs and uncomfortably low tables but without good food, what's the point?