Quilo / Guides

Fish priced per kilo in Portugal: what the board really means

“Robalo 58€/kg” is not a €58 dish and not a €22 dish. It's a unit price waiting for a weight — and until the fish meets the scale, your bill is undefined. This page makes you fluent in the system.

Convert the board to euros

Why per kilo, and not per plate?

Because the restaurant doesn't control the size of a wild fish. The boat lands what it lands: today's robalo might be 400 g or 1.4 kg, and both are perfect. Pricing per plate would force the kitchen to cut everything into anonymous fillets. Pricing per kilo lets them serve the fish whole — which is how fish tastes best — and lets the customer choose the size of the spend. It's the same logic as a butcher's counter, applied at the table.

It also means the €/kg number is information: it tracks the actual auction price at the lota (fish market) that morning. When percebes cost a fortune per kilo, it's because harvesting them off Atlantic rocks is dangerous work — not because you're a tourist.

The three numbers that define your bill

1. €/kgFrom the board or the waiter. Wild (selvagem) is often two to three times farmed (aquacultura) — the board should say which.

2. Raw weightOf the specific fish you picked, whole — head and bones included. One person eats 350–500 g raw; a couple 700 g–1.2 kg.

3. The total€/kg × kg, confirmed out loud before the fish is cooked. After the grill, the conversation is over.

Worked example

Board says robalo 58€/kg. The waiter shows you a 900 g fish. That's 0.9 kg × €58 = ~€52 for the fish, shared between two, plus couvert if you touch it, sides if not included, wine and coffee. A 500 g fish instead? 0.5 × 58 = €29. Same board, same restaurant, €23 difference — the size decision is yours, which is exactly why you want the scale involved.

And on the plate, that 900 g becomes roughly 650–720 g: fish loses 20–30% of its weight to the grill. Universal physics, not Algarve accounting.

Species cheat sheet

Robalo (sea bass) & dourada (gilt-head bream) — the classic per-kilo whole fish; wild vs farmed moves the price most.
Linguado (sole) — per kilo, one fish per person.
Cherne (wreckfish) — too big to serve whole; sold as weighed postas (cutlets), ~250–400 g each.
Camarão (prawns), sapateira (brown crab), percebes (goose barnacles) — per kilo, shells included in the weight.
Sardinhas — per dose (portion), not per kilo. Cataplana and arroz de marisco — fixed price, usually for two. Polvo à lagareiro — usually a fixed-price portion.

The one sentence to memorise

🇵🇹 “Pode pesar o peixe à nossa frente e confirmar o preço antes de grelhar?”

Can you weigh the fish in front of us and confirm the price before grilling?

Copy it, with your numbers filled in →

When the system is being abused

The per-kilo system is honest by default — the abuse pattern is withholding the numbers: “fresh fish of the day” with no €/kg anywhere, a waiter who quotes “about forty” without a scale, a fish that goes to the kitchen unweighed. All three have the same fix: ask for the number, ask for the scale, and if either is refused, order the grilled sardines and enjoy the view you're paying for. Geography patterns that predict this behaviour are mapped in Is this place a trap?