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Questions & Answers about O jantar estava excelente.
Why do we use estava here instead of foi?
To describe how food tastes, Portuguese uses the verb estar because it refers to the condition of the food at that specific moment. We use the imperfect tense estava to describe the ongoing state of the meal while you were experiencing it. If you used foi, which is the preterite of ser, it would sound like you are evaluating the event as a whole (like how well-organized the dinner party was) rather than how the actual food tasted.
Could I use esteve instead of estava since the dinner is definitely over?
You could, but estava is much more natural here. The imperfect estava sets a descriptive scene of how things were during the meal. Using the preterite esteve treats the dinner's excellence as a rigid, closed fact rather than a continuous experience you enjoyed, which sounds a bit unnatural to native speakers when praising a meal.
Would the adjective change if we were talking about the food (a comida) instead of the dinner (o jantar)?
No, it stays exactly the same. Adjectives that end in -e like excelente, inteligente, or verde are gender-neutral in Portuguese. They are used for both masculine and feminine nouns, only changing when made plural by adding an -s.
I know jantar is a verb meaning to eat dinner. Is it always identical to the noun?