EAT | Butchers, Lisbon

This restaurant was on my list for some time now... I read about how great it was and how tasty their aged beef was, and I was extremely curious to try it out. Oh, and that's not a typo, they serve aged beef. Beef aging basically means waiting a couple of weeks between the time that the piece of meat was extracted from the animal and the actually cooking of that meet. It's allowing the meat to start-- kind of -- rotting up, but in a controlled manner. Sounds gross, right? But, oh, it's worth it! This process makes the meat extremely tender, and allows for the concentration and saturation of the natural flavors of the meat! Makes the meat so tender, it melts in your mouth.

This restaurant is located in Parque das Nações, on an area that is almost exclusively offices. In fact, it is place on the ground floor of a huge office building.

We went on a Saturday evening, around 20.30 pm. The restaurant wasn't full. I was expecting it to be packed, but no -- strange, hum? -- We had no reservation and we didn’t have to wait for a table.

The restaurant has a really nice ambiance. It's a large, open dining room, modern, fancy and romantic. The lights are deemed, the tables are far apart just enough for you to feel like you have some privacy. I asked for the Butcher's Stake and the boyfriend had the maminha. The meat is served over a very rustic-looking wood cutting board. Both dishes came with some delicious sweet-potatoes fries and a green-salad. We also asked for garlic bread, but that never arrived to our table! The wine menu was huge, complex actually and full of expensive wines that we'd never heard of. Both our dishes were extremely flavorful. Both were at perfect temperature, tender and super juicy. For desert we had the Butcher's trio. Nothing to rave about.

I know we were there for the meat. And yep, that was great. But overall I felt like it is truly an overpriced restaurant. I felt like they even had too many waiters, some of them were just walking around. I'm all about good costumer service, but that many waiters was just absurd. And I was really unimpressed about that garlic bread situation: asking for something that never arrived to the table and that is even charged on the bill is unacceptable for a restaurant like that.