Anne C.
Yelp
A perfectly lovely evening, until they closed out with racist impersonations...
The food was mostly just okay (except the dessert, which was fabulous), and the prices were very high, but we were okay with that because we wanted to experience good fado and believe artists should be compensated well for their work. The performances started out very well--one of the guitar players gave a short summary of the history of the establishment and of the etiquette of fado, and asked the audience to respect an important Portuguese tradition. And then three different singers performed, and we were sucked into a beautiful tradition. We were jetlagged on the first night of our honeymoon, but we were transported and it was very romantic. Until, that is, the last number, which was ad-libbed. The lead guitar player (who, until that point, I adored because he was so good) jumped into increasingly over-the-top caricatures, crescendo-ing with an incredibly racist portrayal of "Chinese" singing. Every Asian kid knows this impersonation--"ching chang chong." And then one of the singers responded with "arigatou," and everyone laughed some more. I was immediately transported from my lovely (and, again, quite expensive) honeymoon meal to my middle school cafeteria, with my peers making fun of my lunch and my ethnicity in general. It ruined a lovely evening. And then the waitress brought our check, north of 100 euros.
I give this place two stars because the waitstaff was lovely and the food was just as expected. But if the singers want us to respect their tradition, they should respect their diverse audience of tourists from all different backgrounds instead of doing racist impersonations of them.