Meu Limao Lagos – Tapas & Wine Bar Review
We’ve visited this little tapas bar twice in the last couple of weeks. Once with just my wife and I, and again with some members of the family following a long cliff-top walk to Lagos from Luz.
Meu Limao – Tapas in Lagos
It’s a shame I waited until after the second visit to post this review, as our overall impression of the place was slightly less favourable after the repeat visit.
Let’s start with the food, as that should always be the key consideration. Meu Limao is an “international tapas” kind of concept, offering Portuguese and American style dishes alongside typical Spanish tapas. Some dishes, such as the patatas bravas, and shrimps in a coconut sauce are clearly homemade, and successful as a result, and a special mention should go to the bacalhau-a-bras (a Portuguese dish of salt cod with potato sticks, onion and egg) which on both occasions contained an unusually generous amount of shredded fish.
Less successful are some of the other dishes, which are distinctly ordinary and seem to be there to bulk up the menu. Spicy chicken wings tasted to me like something straight from a packet and into a fryer, and my companion’s pork ribs were similarly uninspiring. It’s a shame, as these dishes reduced the overall perception of quality, which was pleasingly high in terms of some of the other dishes.
On both of our visits a “festival of mussels” was in progress, offering the shellfish served in a number of different ways. We tried an “a marinhera” option, which was enjoyable, with large and tasty mussels, but we did stop short of feeling the urge to mop up every last drip of the sauce. This turned out to be a good thing, because…..
Nobody offered us bread or olives on our second visit. Nor did our water arrive until we re-requested it. Also, one of the tapas dishes failed to show up until long after everything else was finished.
The haphazard service wasn’t helped by the fact an additional waitress seemed to start her shift half way through our meal, and no discussion seemed to have taken place with regard to who should be serving which table.
As a result, we started to be offered everything twice – desserts, coffees etc, and this, coupled with confusion about our missing dishes, left everything feeling distinctly slapdash. It wasn’t annoying as such, merely irritating.
All in all then, despite a very tasty chocolate mousse at the end, which is a pretty reliable way of ensuring I will recommend a restaurant to my friends, my recommendation is cautious at best. As we approach the proper tourist season, I don’t think I’ll be the last person to be frustrated by disorganized service here, which is a pity, as some of the tapas being produced are really rather good.
