Alma

Alma means Soul in Portuguese, and chef Henrique Sa Pessoa has lots of it.

His restaurant is soulful and beautiful, so are his dishes.

For our lunch on Wednesday, April 12th 2017, we had à la carte menu for our family of three. Both adults chose the main course (monkfish with zucchini flower, green curry , coconut milk and baby shrimp) and our six-year-old son had a beef entrecote, celeriac, mousseline, bacon crumble and barbecue juice. We concluded with desserts: mango, passionfruit, coconut, black sesame seeds for the adults; and a chocolate « bomb », salted caramel, hazelnut, sorbet for the little gourmet.

Each dish was a pleasure to watch and incredibly tasty to the mouth, from the creative amuse bouche to the wonderful desserts.

The wine list has a comprehensive selection of best wine growers around Europe, and most importantly, incredible Portuguese wines some of which we selected.

We had mixed feelings about the service, though: the lady was very nice, even tried to speak a few words of French to us, but our bearded Maître d’ was very cranky, not welcoming at all when we showed up and extremely cold all the way through our lunch. He never even smiled once or said something nice. We were kind of taken aback by his behavior as it is not what you would expect of a Michelin starred restaurant.