Arroz de Marisco at Cervejaria Pinoquio in Lisbon

One of my 'to eat' list items in Lisbon is Arroz de Marisco, which is Portuguese seafood rice.  This trip to Lisbon being the 3rd time, I wonder why I never thought about trying this dish already before.

Anyway, we decided to try this dish at a seafood restaurant called Cervejaria Pinoquio at Praca Restauradores 79. This restaurant is located at the south end of Praca dos Restauradores, across the road from Hotel Avenida Palace where we are staying so it is very handy.

I read some reviews on Tripadvisor; some said that this place gets busy and people would cue to get in.  We did not book a table however since it's just across the road from our hotel, we decided to just turn up and see if we could get in.  The place was getting busy both inside and outside but we were seated right away.

Inside the decor is all basic, rather spartan with lime greenish colour paints on walls. There were quite a few waiting staff, constantly moving to transport dishes and drinks around the tables.  We ordered a mixed salad for starter, thinking that the seafood rice we order for the main course may take a bit while.

Considering how busy the place was, hallway through our mixed salad, the seafood rice dish arrived at our table.  It looked really good - it had everything we like .... lobster, clams, prawns and fresh corianders worked very well with it.  It was really delicious.

Mixed salad is just a simple one with lettuce, sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chopped mushroom with some dry herbs. The waiter put some white wine vinegar, olive oil and some rock salt  and mixed them with salad, brought it over to our table, saying "if you want more dressing, just let me know." The dressing was perfect. Such a simple salad yet it was so tasty and refreshing, and lots of them!

As soon as you sit down, they brought a basketful of bread and a small bowl of black olives with garlic to our table. These are 'curvert' that are not free and you would be charged if you eat any of them.  We usually ask waiters to take them away but lovely warm bread with melted butter looked really nice so we decided to keep them. I can't remember how much we were charged for the cover however that did not matter; we ate them to mop up the lovely soup left in the stainless steel bowl after we finished the seafood and rice.

To be honest, at first we thought these were garlic bread ... it was just a normal butter
anyway, Portuguese bread is really good....

 We had all these with a half bottle of white wine.

 And of course, the meal has to end with good Portuguese bica!  We really enjoyed our dinner!

As we were leaving the restaurant, I see lots of big crabs in the fish tank.  I remembered some of reviewers on Tripadvisor were giving positive reviews about crabs.  Maybe next time .... however even a single crab looks like a lot of portion for one person to eat ....

Outside of the restaurant, we saw people cueing to get in. The restaurant was packed both inside and outside. We were lucky that we got in without booking and were served right away.

If we had any time left before we go home, we may come back to this restaurant and I want to try their pan fried clams with olive oil, garlic (lots of them) with coriander and boiled shrimps with rock salt.

There are just sooooo many restaurants where you could try in Lisbon; if only we have more time and money to try them all!

That's all forks!