My Review of One Michelin Star LOCO Restaurante

My first time in Portugal was so much fun! I couldn’t wait to try some of their cuisines and check out their popular restaurants. One restaurant we made a reservation for was at LOCO Restaurante in Lisbon, located near 18C Baroque Basílica da Estrela. They’re a modern cuisine restaurant focusing on micro-seasonal ingredients and a 16 course tasting menu!

While in Lisbon, we stayed at the Corpo Santo Lisbon Historical Hotel which is a really NEAT hotel, by the way. If you’re thinking of traveling to Portugal anytime soon, consider this hotel as it is central to most things and close to the water!

We took a quick 5ish minute taxi ride to the restaurant. Michael asked if we should walk and I side-eyed him because not only is Lisbon super hilly but i was planning on wearing my super cute Oscar de la Renta wedges that I found for such a steal on Poshmark! No way I was trekking in heels to this restaurant!

When we got there, we were greeted by huge, arch windows in a quaint cobblestone corner. It was picture perfect, and a good excuse for me to take a photo next to the restaurant’s sign with my Zimmermann dress!

When you enter the restaurant you’re immediately see a large indoor tree. And to your left, they’ve got a glass wall with a wine collection artistically put together.

The place is surprisingly smaller than I envisioned but its Europe and restaurant space is likely limited. To the right just before you’re seated, you can see the open kitchen and watch the staff prepare meals.

The staff sat us at the corner of the restaurant, by the window. so we had a lovely view of the outside cobblestone area, which overlooked a hilly downward street. It’s a small yet open space so no matter where you sit, you’ll be able to see the kitchen area and the people preparing the food. Also, I believe I only saw six or seven tables, so its a pretty intimate space.

Here’s what the view looked like from our table:

We were given a little brochure of LOCO Restaurante which goes over how the tasting menu is divided up, along with a short background of the restaurant itself and their mission/purpose. Very insightful, so we knew we had five small bites coming our way before the main course bites.

So the restaurant didn’t have an actual physical menu for us to look at. They presented us each of the tasting “moments” (as they call them – they’re essentially small dishes) and explained what each one was, briefly went over how they made it and what ingredients they used. Obviously this was a lot of info and too much for me to remember.

I asked if Michael can get us a copy of the menu later (since he was the one that made the reservation). They sent over the menu in a PDF format the next day!

I’ll post the parts of the PDF menu below as I go over each sections of the dining experience. For the snacks portion, here’s their menu for the evening we dined there:

Here’s what the five “snacks” looked like. I placed them from top left to bottom right in the order that we received them. There’s five altogether but they made a special “replacement” one for me since I don’t like most shellfish and I believe one of the bites contained either clams or scallops. For my replacement bite I had the shellfish replaced with beets which gave it that purple color – a very delicious replacement!

My favorite snack was the fried bao with roasted peanut and roasted red bell pepper.

The most unique snack I tried was the stewed beef tongue. I ate it after the fact of knowing what it was – I don’t think I would’ve eaten it (or would be hesitant to) had I known it was a tongue I was eating!

Next up in our fine dining experience was the sourdough slices with 5 different spreads for us to try out. This was one of my favorite dishes of the evening. All the spreads tasted delicious. My favorite was the spread containing the sausage puree. Honestly, all five spreads were excellent, even the spirulina spread tasted good! The sourdough had the perfect texture – not too tough to bite into but “squishy” and savory with a chewy crust ( i LOVE chewy crusts!).

I took some videos below of the friendly chef explaining the five different spreads. It was a bit loud in the restaurant but you can still make out her explanations for each one.

We weren’t required to finish the sourdough portion before getting the next few courses – the main bites. We could take our time and enjoy the bread with our main bites.

Next up were five main courses. My favorite of the five was the roasted octopus with black garlic emulsion. However, I did also like the fermented broccoli heart dish (depicted in the top right picture below). Michael’s favorite was the grilled short rib (I’ve got a video of them serving it for him below). But all 5 portions were just as tasty and full of flavor. The presentations were on point too! They were definitely instagrammable! Here’s the main courses according to their PDF menu (with the sourdough and spreads listed at the top):

And lastly, time for the dessert bites! LOCO Restaurante’s dining experience contains three dessert tasting dishes to try. I’ve got them in the photos below in the order that we received them. The first one was delicious – its an apple tart with a small scoop of sorbet. I really liked this one, but it was my least favorite of the three (All very tasty though!).

The second dessert was a sweet potato flavored one with gelatin dots (they’re called Harissa’s gel – not sure what this is but you won’t be disappointed!). The final dessert is yet another delicious scoop of ice cream on top of a butterscotch (I think) cookie. This one also had gelatin dots with fruit flavors. I didn’t quite understand the description for it in the PDF menu above, I’m guessing it was poorly translated into English (I don’t know Portuguese).

In every fine dining, Michelin Star restaurant experience I’ve dined at, I know that when the last dessert item is given, that you’re bound to get a few extra dessert bites at the end of the entire course. I’m not sure what these are called, finishing bites, perhaps? Palette cleansers? In any case, the small bite (or several) we got at LOCO Restaurante came in a wooden box in which one of the chefs opened in front of us.

She picked out each one and placed them on an embroidery hoop. And as she placed them, she again explained what ingredients they were made of and the history behind each one. She also recommended that we eat them starting counter clockwise (from pink marshmallow cubes to eventually the chocolate ones in the center).

They all had great, flavors – nothing too intense or sweet except maybe the yellow gelatin cubes covered in sugar. The pistachio bite was very good along with the chocolate one.

Would I rate this a 1 Michelin star? I have been thinking about this a lot and I am sure there is a calculated reasoning and set of steps as to why restaurants get rated the way they do. It is more than just what the food tastes like and the presentation itself. It is also small things, for example, at least one dish of all the dishes that your party orders for your dinner must be placed at the same time for all party members attending. This of course happened for all of our dishes, but it is something that most people are not aware of.

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