Antiqvvm

Antiqvvm is located in a park in the Museu Romantico, a little hidden but gorgeous, with large windows in beautiful arches looking out into the green. The fully vegetarian tasting menu is called “Organic”. Antiqvvm (even with the old-school Roman-style spelling), Organic, a beautiful garden — all of this conjures up hopes of a classical, produce-centric menu.

Indeed we begin with classical simplicity: excellent bread, olive oil, seaweed butter. Simple but well-executed. (7-/10)

No lengthy amuse bouche sequences, instead we jump straight to the first course, featuring tomato, burrata, pesto, balsamic, and almonds. The burrata comes in two forms, as a kind of jelly and as ice cream. The whole thing is very delicate and well balanced and each element is very well executed, though the flavour profile is hardly new or exciting. (7/10)

Perhaps to make up for the very traditional flavor profile of the first course, we proceed with tofu, citrus, mango curry ice cream, and some kind of spicy soy sauce. This is about as odd as it sounds. The dominating flavor is the curry ice cream, which tastes of supermarket curry powder. Combined with the sweet mango and spicy soy sauce, it’s interesting but not in a good way. (6/10)

After this exotic excursion, we get back to more familiar territory with pumpkin ravioli on a porcini sauce, served with Swiss chard and porcini foam. This is very similar to the first course in the sense that it is very well executed, perfectly seasoned, but a tiny bit dull. There is a wide range between dull and unusually weird, and so far we’ve only sampled the extremes of that range. (7-/10)

And the pendulum immediately swings back to unusually weird: plankton risotto with kaffir lime!? The dish is called “Into the Sea”, but I can’t taste any sea. It’s just a really, really sweet risotto. Why is it sweet? I don’t know. Am I enjoying this sweetness? Absolutely not. It tastes artificial and makes no sense in the context of the dish. (5/10)

And we go right back to traditional flavor profiles, with potato, cheese, and truffle. Unfortunately, this does not match the level of execution of the previous more classic dishes: subpar truffle, cheese with an unappetizing amount of condensation on it, and potato puree that feels more like a filler than anything else leave a lot to be desired. (6/10)

An assortment of various sweet artificially flavored creams then does me in. The only thing with a natural genuine taste on this plate are two halves of raspberry, to which I cling like a life ring. (5/10)

The cloying sweetness of the final petit fours might charitably be interpreted as a throwback to the risotto dish earlier. (6/10)

On the upside, Antiqvvm provides a dedicated vegetarian menu, a rarity in Portugal. On the downside, little of it tastes any good.