EAT | Amelia, Lisbon

A while back -- It was almost one year I go --  I went for brunch to the mecca of blogger -- Nicolau. And now I finally went to visit his girlfriend Amélia.

While Nicolau is located downtown, Amelia is literally up the hill, in Campo de Ourique. With just a hand full of tables, and cute and trendy decor, both these places are always full. I mean really full. Full of locals and tourists. I would dare to say that *these* have become a touristic attraction of the city.

Amélia is really cute. Outside, it has the most adorable pink awnings that are impossible to go unnoticed. The decoration in side, is really simple but really edgy. Being Amelia a girl of course all the decoration is very girly with touches of pastel pink. There's a small waiting room at the entrance, with a small couch and where you can find the famous Amelia Painting. You have a big counter where you can sit and eat if you want, and at the back you have two eating areas, one inside and another one outside. The decor inside is really similar to Nicolau's. It's the same style. Really really similar, but still cute.

Amelia's menu has a lot of options. I  don't remember exactly but I would dare to say that it's exactly the same as from Nicolau. We thought about asking for the brunch menu, but we ended up picking up a few of the different things that they offer, so that we could end up with a full table. The brunch menu there costs 15€ is a bit different than the ones I've been having. A side from one juice and one hot drink it include one pancake, a yogurt bowl, and an avocado toast. If you want eggs, you have to pay extra: 3€ for scramble, 5€ for Benedict. It doesn't come with a croissants, or mignardises. And since my thing are really the eggs I just decided to "mix and match" instead of going for the brunch menu. So we ordered: Egg Benedict, Eggs Nicolau, Fit Pancake and Regular Pancake w/ Maple Syrup. To drink I had a cappuccino and my friend opted for a Banana Milkshake.

The service was fast. I guess it has to be since they are always packed. The drinks came first, and they were OK. A cappuccino is a cappuccino. A milkshake is a milkshake. I liked the little personalized sugar packet that came with my cappuccino. It's a cute touch, and it makes a nice souvenir if you don't use it up.

Next came the food, and everything came at once. The eggs were OK. My friend really liked hers but they were not that special. She had Eggs Nicolau - two poached eggs on top of avocado toast sprinkled with turmeric granola. Looked pretty. My Eggs Benedict were average. The hollandaise was OK, the texture as good but it definitely lacked some flavor. The eggs come with some slices of **turky ham** that was as flaverul as a piece of paper, and it's served on top of an english muffin that needed to be toasted for a little bit longer. The eggs were well poached.

The pancakes were both really good and it was definitely my favorite part of the meal. My friends' Fit Pancake has made with buckwheat and it was covered with banana, strawberries and a drizzle of maple syrup. Mine, were just regular, simple pancakes hat came with a little dish of delicious maple syrup. In both cases, the actual pancake was not very sweet but it went really well with that earthy-sweetness of the maple syrup. I think this was the best part of the meal. Warm, sweet and fluffy.

Overall, this is type of place that is about good pictures and not good food. And this is the same feeling I had when I went to Nicolau. These places flood your social media feeds with amazing looking food, cute decor, but at the end they serve really over priced average food, that you could definitely replicate at home for a fraction of the price. A really small fraction. It's not bad food, don't get me wrong, but the quality of the food doesn't go with the quality of the space. They have all the trendy clichés on the menu that look awesome and cute on pictures -- chia pudim, bowls, avocado toast, green juice, Matcha... It's a photo op place. I just wish they applied as much attention to details to their food as they did to the decor. We left with some good photos tho.