Incredible - been traveling Europe for two weeks and this is the best meal I've had. Great value for price also. Get the tuna.

Husband had seafood soup which was kinda fishy. Ordered a bread basket and half the bread was disgusting. I spit it out. The other half was okay. Two kinds of bread. They need to stop serving the smaller bread. It was gross I had the scabbardfish which was delish. It comes with boiled potatoes. I also was able to use the salad bar, which was excellent, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, olives onions. I had to ask for check a few times It's a super cute place that felt very much like locals loved it. read more

SO. MUCH. SEAFOOD. This restaurant on the south side of São Miguel island is perfect for seafood lovers. We tried limpets for the first time here, an Azores island specialty, and they were oh-so-juicy. They have an extensive selection of fish and everything was so fresh and grilled just right. There's an open salad bar in the back so you can get your dose of veggies too! read more

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After spending the morning driving in the heavy fog across the island to visit the thermal pools and furnaces we ended up finding their little restaurant in a little port village and being Easter most restaurants was all reservations only. The owner was very accommodating and offered us a table with a wait but we decide to take an out door table since the rain was now just misty. We had the same dishes pretty much as we've been having during our visit. Everything we ordered was good. Staff was very pleasant and the owner was also very pleasant to talk to. read more

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Great food !! Also nice deals on beers. View and service were both 10! We will definitely be back.

Although we didn't have a reservation the owner made sure to get us a table as soon as one opened up. The restaurant was packed. We had to wait, but it was worth it. Delicious simple food. We had the octopus salad, the fried shrimp and a grilled fish, everything was perfectly seasoned and yummy. Waitress was very nice and the restaurant patio very cozy. read more

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We rolled into this place for lunch on our very first day. We landed at 7am, hopped into a rental car and slowly made our way up to Furnas. As it was way too early to check into our hotel, we thought we'd come here to grab lunch. It's a very cute and relaxed place. Everyone was very friendly and spoke English well. We had our very first lapas here and they were amazing! They were brought out to us on a hot sizzling platter, with lots of garlic, butter and lemon. I mean how can you go wrong. There's also a "make your own salad" bar, where everything was extremely fresh. So why only four stars you may ask? Well for the main course, we decided to order the stewed octopus, and I guess that after trying it, I definitely prefer to have my octopus grilled. I'll chalk that up to a bad order. There was lots of great looking grilled fish options on the menu that I probably should have tried first. Don't make my mistake. I would have loved to come back to this place a second time... If I did, I'm sure I would have had good reason to upgrade it to five stars. We tried on our last night here, but were thwarted by police blocking the one and only road down to the town. It was not meant to be. We'll always have the lapas. read more

Ponta do garajau - Sizzling lapas platter - Portuguese Near Me - Açores, 20

This restaurant was amazing! I wish we could go back. Your meal comes with the salad bar. The bread is delicious (order the cheese with the bread. Soft and delicious) The seafood was excellent! They bring you a book with all the pictures of the seafood. The limpets here were the best I've had on the island! All the fish we had was prepared well. We particularly liked the Black Scabbardfish which was tender and flakey as well as the Rockfish. Both were grilled perfectly. The octopus was tender and baked in the oven in a deep/rich sauce with potatoes as well. The sangria was sooo delicious. A little sparkling. The bathrooms were cleanest and nicest of any restaurant I've been in. The restaurant had a cute outdoor seating area with picnic table seating. read more

The food was perhaps the best we had in San Miguel; you must try the wreckfish - or any of the fresh fish available - and do not miss the limpets. Start with olives, cheese and bread. They have a tiny salad bar! (Perhaps unusual in the Azores?) Atmosphere was perfect too for a fish and seafood restaurant in a working fishing village: conch shells on the table, fishnets on the walls, oil lamp-based chandeliers. The service was a definite plus: our server was friendly but not intrusive and super competent. For this type of place, five stars all around. OK read more

This restaurant is a short drive from Furnas, located in the small town of Ribeira Quente, near a beach where parts of the ocean are geothermally heated. The entire town was a pleasure to visit, not yet too overrun by non-local riffraff like ourselves, but still cosmopolitan, cool and savvy. Ponta do Garajau served the same classic, simply prepared Azorean dishes as many other restaurants we visited during our time on Sao Miguel, but the food was made with noticeably better ingredients and better technique -- and that's what separated this wheat from the chaff. First tip: Reserve. We managed to walk in for an early lunch, but this was by no means a shoe-in. Many walk-in visitors were turned away after us and almost all tables were marked reserved. (Reservations seem big in Azores, in general.) Second tip: Order seafood. The menu comes with a fish "Bible" translating local fish names into English. Take the hint and order seafood in some form. They do it very, very well. The whole Alfonsino (red sea bream) I tried was gorgeous, grilled perfectly over wood in the traditional way, and simply, perfectly seasoned. It came with a slice of lemon, boiled potatoes, and a butter sauce, which I couldn't bring myself to use as I didn't want anything to obscure the flavors of the perfectly fresh, sweet fish. We also ordered grilled chicken with fries for the kids -- not at all the bland, pedestrian fare you might expect under such a name. The chicken was incredible, probably free range to judge by the concentrated flavor, texture, and lack of superfluous fat, again seasoned with an expert hand and grilled over wood. This may have been the best grilled (or roasted) chicken we've ever had. Even the fries were well fried, not soggy, tasteless afterthoughts as they were at many island restaurants. Our children treat ketchup like its own food group and after we asked, the staff were nice enough to bring them more packets than I'm sure they thought anyone could humanly need (almost all of which our ketchup-a-tarians quickly dispatched). Our final dish was a plate of morcela and I think chouriço, grilled and sliced, served with yams (white-fleshed "real" yams, not sweet potatoes), and a sunny-side-up egg. The skin on the sausage had a lovely snap, with crispy edges from the grill. I'm by no means a connoisseur, but we enjoyed the creamy texture of the morcela, the slight hint of nutmeg. Lunch comes with an unlimited salad bar, which included more varied ingredients than other places we tried on Sao Miguel (though it still left me pining for one of our 30+ ingredient salad bars in NYC). There was red-leafed lettuce, spinach, pickle whole onion, sliced white onion, shredded carrot, cucumber and sliced tomatoes. Again, the devil was in the details. All of these ingredients, though simple, were of superior quality, with the tomatoes being particularly standout. They were an heirloom green and red varietal, not the hard, square, flavorless supermarket sort common elsewhere. As was true elsewhere, only olive oil and vinegar were offered as dressings. Both were of fair quality, here. We had a bottle of locally-produced Quinta da Jardinete chardonnay with our meal, which was shockingly good. I'm not usually a huge fan of this grape, since it's often over-oaked and abused -- but this winery really treats this grape well, resulting in a nuanced, lightly acidic, minerally, grown-up-style wine that went incredibly well with my grilled fish. Terroir at its best. If I'd had room in my suitcase, I would've carried home a case of this stuff. Other details: - Staff asked whether they should bring bread, fresh cheese and olives to the table at the start, rather than bringing it out automatically. As barbaric, gauche Americans, we liked that a lot. (No to bread, since the kids will eat that and nothing else; yes to the excellent olives. Wish we'd accepted the fresh cheese, but hopefully we'll return for that.) - Lunch seems to be served only on the patio, though I believe there is an indoor dining room. There are umbrellas up, but it still gets hot. - Bathrooms are spotlessly clean. - Food and wine menus are brought rolled up in a bottle. Bills are brought in a cute wooden box, with a fresh flower on top. What a classy touch. (The one and only other time I remember seeing this was at a restaurant in Thailand.) - See above note on gauche, barbaric Americans. We had to ask for food to be wrapped since the tired children seemed about to self destruct halfway through the meal -- and the staff did so graciously, without looking at us like we had three heads. It is not the norm in Azores (or Portugal, or any part of Europe that I know of, really) to wrap food to go. This is a restaurant you should go out of your way for. read more

We chose Ponta do garajau for Dinner for our first night on the Island and it exceeded expectations. Start with the house made soft white cheese with fragrant and slightly spicy sweet pepper sauce and house marinated olives with garlic. (They bring them to the table but you can refuse, DON'T!) Next was an Azoran delicacy, the Lapas or limpet clams. A full tray broiled with butter garlic and lemon, such a fresh taste of the local climate. While the wine list was broad, the house wine was some of our favorite, don't skip it just to have a bottle of something on the table. My wife had a wonderful cut of swordfish, steaky and tender seasoned well with with garlic butter and lemon. My chargrilled Splendid Alphonso was one of the best dishes I have eaten. Top five for sure. Flavorful and tender, not fishy, super fresh. Treated with a garlic lemon and sea salt that played with the intense smoke of the grill to elevate the dish to four star standards. I could not believe the dish I had, especially for the price. If you are in the area, on the island, or maybe even a quick plane trip away, this is well worth your time. Enjoy! read more

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Enjoyed the Triggerfish and Limpets! Very tasty and fresh!!! The wine, local cheese and olives were also very delicious. Very good service and cute ambiance! read more

Great little restaurant with fresh seafood and beautiful ambience! Definitely a wonderful dinner! read more

Ponta do garajau - Menu in a bottle! So adorable - Portuguese Near Me - Açores, 20

Amazing food, not your typical Azorean seafood place. Worth the beautiful scenic drive off the highway to or from Furnas. The staff here were incredibly nice and spoke fluent english. It was some of the best seafood I have ever had. Not too salty like most Azorean dishes. We We had barnacles for the first time and they were so good! The size and species can only be found in the Azores. We also split the octopus dish, which was more than enough for two people. It was cooked perfectly, tender and juicy. Yum! For any fish novices they bring you an english book of local fish species that is extremely helpful. Not only are fish rated by taste in this book, but also by the efficacy in how they are caught. So many restaurants in the Azores bring you a huge fish list of unrecognizable fishes and then you're expected to choose. That or they bring you to an ice bed of fresh fish and you pick from there. This little book helped provide context on how the fish is supposed to taste, because let's face it, when looking at a list of fish names or fillets on an ice bed, how are you really to know about taste? Bonus points for having amazing olives. They cure the olives themselves in an amazing mixture of garlic and olive oil, no pungent salty taste. read more

Had a amazing Splendid Alphonsino fish. Lightly grilled, very tasty. My husband had the wreckfish, which was tasty but he did not realize it would be prepared like fish n chips. Great red ale and a nice glass of white wine. A great lunch after our visit to Furnas in the fog. read more

If you are looking for a really fresh seafood meal with atmosphere, then look no further , Ponta Do Garajau is your place. Good fresh seafood with excellent sangria. They have great steaks and grilled chicken too if that's your pleasure. Excellent wait staff and very friendly and accommodating ! If you are near Ribera Quente then stop here. You won't be disappointed! read more