DESERVES ZERO STARS.
I am visiting my family in the Algarve, and was dying to eat grilled sardines. On Sundays, many family restaurants are closed in Portugal, so my cousin and I went here. It was full and we waited to get in. We ordered one all you can eat fish, one all you can eat grilled meats, a liter of Sangria and bread. The bread and sangria came promptly. It took 50 minutes to get our food. We are no strangers to busy restaurants (NYers) but what was appalling is the we were ignored and multiple servers helped the two tables of drunks next to us, bring them food and drink every minute. Never once during the 50 minutes wait did our waiter turn around and ask if we were ok, did we want more wine or bread during the wait. I finally stopped 2 waiters after 45 minutes and said in Portuguese where's our food--our server said it is coming it takes a while (growing up with a Portuguese father who grilled us fish and meat, no actually--grilled fish and meat does not take a while--it is not a beef Wellington). When the food came no attempt was made to bring anything to drink or bread. By this point the drunk tables had moved through many refills of fish, many bottles of wine, desserts and shots.
The meat was overcooked, the cutlets were leather-like. Inedible. We asked for more fish.
The tables next to us were getting drunker, banging on the table and still had 3 servers' attention of food, booze and photo taking. When they started screaming "DOWN DOWN DOWN" for each of them drinking. It was enough--we had been there for 90 minutes of hunger, thirst and pub-level noise.
The manager comped us the 11 Euro Sangria. He said they were short 2 servers.
We were ignored while our server helped the table 2 feet away non-stop. He kept his back to us. So two quiet middle aged women could not have their dinner served because the loud drunk youngsters took all the help's attention.
We came back to the hotel and ordered room service.
JUST AWFUL. read more