Vamos O Manteigas - Idanha-A-Nova

This is an update to my earlier reviews. I ate here again in August 2020, when we were still in the grips of the COVID pandemic. I was most impressed with the efforts of the restaurant in terms of safeguarding and hygiene and felt very confident in that sense. Manteigas remains as ever. Basic, not elegant or sophisticated but always busy! It serves a purpose with the local population and passers by and tourists alike. It won’t win any Michelin stars, that’s for sure but all the food is freshly prepared in the kitchen and they have a rotation of cooked dishes each day for dinner and lunch, mostly Portuguese classics. Portion sizes are huge ludicrously so to northern European palates (unless you are German perhaps, sorry.... but the quality is not bad at all and prices fair. Very fair. The house wine is local, rustic but goes well with the food (e.g. pork rib, suckling pig, salted cod but they have quite a good wine list if you want to buy a better wine by the bottle. And I would say as an Englishman who speaks reasonably good Portuguese with family connections in the town, don’t worry if you don’t speak a word of Portuguese! They are very friendly and you won’t fail to order a dish or go hungry.

This place is very popular with locals as it’s cheap, it is at a prominent location on the road into the town and also is one of the few places in town that is open to all day, every day for food. Even on public holidays, usually. The family name is Manteigas (literally ‘Butters’ in the long tradition of some strange surnames in Portugal) and this really is a family-run restaurant in all senses, with the matriarch in the kitchen, the son serving at the bar and the daughter-in-law serving in the restaurant, etc. I suppose we shouldn’t ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’ and c.€10 for a two-course lunch with wine can’t really be faulted. There is always a fair set lunch and the local lamb chops always good. The have a surprisingly good wine, though none of the locals seem to drink it! This place won’t win any awards for gastronomy, with its wipe clean tables, french fries with everything (more or less) and local wine served in a glass jug but it is representative of many places found widely in regional Portugal. Portions are generous to say the least!

Não é mais a primeira vez que este restaurante me surpreende para o positivo em um jantar, mas é sempre bom para confirmar que o bom serviço e excelente preparação em um pós pandemia são mantidos!

Comida caseira, saborosa e bem feita. Muito simpática. preços muito convidativos. para repetir com certeza.

This was our second visit. The restaurant was busy but we were seated immediately. Very cheerful and friendly staff for whom nothing was too much trouble, even down to the off-menu requests for the children. The food was excellent, extremely well cooked and very tasty. No-one left hungry! Would we return? Absolutely