BellaLisa Valmor

While on holiday in Lisbon, we stumbled across this amazing restaurant, that was right near our hotel. It's gems like this that make me so excited to blog all about them. It's an Italian restaurant called BellaLisa Valmor and is located on the Avenida Visconde Valmor. I'll link their website here.

We enjoyed our meal so much that we went back two more times. That hardly ever occurs whenever we go away. 

The staff were all really, exceptionally friendly and engaging and the decor was really charming and quaint, yet still modern.

On the first night, they were offering everyone a starter on the house, which we accepted of course. We never usually order starters but if it's free, why not. 

When it arrived, I was a bit doubtful about whether I would enjoy it. It was a Bruschetta Bella Lisa, which is a slice of garlic bread with goats cheese, honey drizzled over it and topped with a raspberry and a walnut. It was mouthwateringly delicious. I knew honey and goats cheese worked well together, but I would never have thought to put a raspberry on top, but it tasted amazing.

I had Spaghetti Carbonara on the first night and Taglietelle Piemonte on the second night, while Stefane preferred to have pizzas both times (Pizza Calzone Milanese and Pizza Gamberoni, to be exact.) 

On the third night, I only took photos of our dessert for some reason. We shared a delicious tiramisu and both had teeny tiny coffees, which are called "bica".

My only regret is that I didn't try the Spaghetti alla forma, but I did manage to snap a picture of one of the staff making it. They do it in front of the people who have ordered it and I have never seen anything like it. They scrape the inside of a huge parmesan wheel, then they add cooked spaghetti with cream and mix it all together, while adding truffle oil. To finish, they serve it with some ham and it looks amazing! 

Price wise, it's all really reasonable and I would even say more on the cheaper side of the scale. It's definitely worth a visit, if you want brilliant quality food for a good price.

Restaurant Everest

My sister, Naty, graduated from Lycée on Friday and in order to celebrate, our dad took us all out to dinner. Naty recommended an Indian/Nepalese restaurant called Restaurant Everest, which is situated near the Gare de Luxembourg. We are usually creatures of habit and tend to stick to one restaurant but her choice turned out to be an extremely good one!

The restaurant itself doesn't look like much from the outside, but don't let that put you off. It's also quite hidden on a back road, running parallel with Avenue de la Gare. The interior is quite small, but nice and cosy and the staff are really friendly. They also had a TV that was showing the Colombia - Brazil match, which everyone was happy about. I don't know why exactly, but it felt like we were on holiday in Spain, what with the football and the relaxed atmosphere. 

We always order four different dishes and a few naans or chapatis and share everything between the five of us (and always end up taking a lot home!). My dad spotted that they had Nepalese Momos on the menu, so we started with those. They are basically delicious, little meat-filled steamed dumplings that come with a mint sauce and a spicy tomato chutney. We had to refrain from eating all of them so that we'd still have room for the main course, but they were seriously amazing. Our dad likes to tell us that Momos are actually tiny furry creatures that live on Mount Everest and in order to eat them, you have to hit them with a hammer. I'm not entirely sure how he managed to come up with this story or where it originated from, but there you go. (Little disclaimer that the dumplings obviously never used to be little furry creatures, just in case you were worried.)

For our main course we ordered lamb keema curry (my absolute favourite), lamb tikka masala, chicken korma and chicken green kebab, all of which were amazingly tasty. We also got a variety of naans, including cheese and garlic, as well as dal tadka and rice. I don't usually eat too much when we go to Indian restaurants but I actually had a second helping of the lamb keema. 

Then for dessert, Stefane and I shared a Dame Blanche (completely authentic haha) and also ordered some coffees because they smelled really good. It ended up being fairly expensive, but we did over order and the quality and taste of the food was excellent.

We all left feeling completely stuffed, takeaway bags in tow. The restaurant has a website, which I will link here. You can order takeaway straight from the website, which is surprisingly advanced for Luxembourg restaurants.

Porta Nova

Hi everyone,

I meant to put this blogpost up yesterday, but when we got home, drama ensued. We were walking to our house when two men ran past, followed by a younger guy who shouted for help as the men had stolen money. Stefane and my brother ran after them and I panicked and ran straight to the house to get my mum for help. We went to where the others had ran off and found out the men had escaped, and one of them had hit Stefane on the head with a metal knife sharpener. The police arrived to look for the men and get statements and then we went straight to the hospital and spent three hours waiting to be seen. Luckily, Stefane is alright but has a huge bruise below his eyebrow, but we were all shaken up, obviously, so that explains why I wasn't able to blog. If any of you live in Luxembourg and need to go to a hospital on a Sunday, you can find out which ones are open here and if you need to find a pharmacy, then check here. Now on to the actual blogpost!

Sunday was Mother's day in Luxembourg, so we all went out for lunch. We chose to go to Porta Nova, which is an Italian restaurant in Limpertsberg. We used to go there a lot when we were younger and I always associate it with fun memories. 

The restaurant is a bit hidden, in between the Utopia cinema and the Magnum club, and is right near the Glacis. The interior has changed a lot since the last time I was there and is really clean and modern. They also have a covered terrace, but since it has been so hot these last few days (up to 33°C!), we decided to book a table inside. Unfortunately they didn't have the air conditioning on and we all suffered a little bit because of that. Service was good however and everyone was really friendly.

I decided to change things up a bit and order meat filled cannelloni instead of pizza. It was absolutely delicious and really filling. Stefane had Pizza Scampi (pizza with prawns), my brother had Pizza Porta Nova, which had parma ham, rocket and philadelphia cheese, my dad and my grandmother both had Saltimbocca alla romana (veal topped with proscuitto) and chips, my mum had Scampi a l'ail (garlic prawns) and chips and finally, my sister had Pizza Parmigiana, which is pizza with parma ham.

We were all completely satisfied and happy with what we had chosen, but by the time the dessert menu came around we were all boiling hot again. So naturally we used that as a perfectly acceptable excuse to get a nice, cold dessert! 

It was a hard decision to make, since the dessert menu offered so many amazing choices. I ended up ordering a Dame Blanche, which is vanilla ice cream, cream and hot melted chocolate that is poured over the ice cream. It was delicious but as per usual, too much to finish. The others all went for different things, like banana slit, strawberry ice cream, panna cotta and nougat glacé. 

I would say that price wise, it is standard for Italian restaurants here in Luxembourg, not too expensive but not especially cheap, so somewhere in the middle, but completely reasonable for the portion sizes and quality of the food that you get. 

All in all, we all really enjoyed ourselves and left feeling full. They have a website which I will link here, where you can find the address and their phone number so you can book a table in advance. They also have an online version of the menu, but they don't do home deliveries.