Columbus Ristorante & Beach — Restaurant in Sal

Even for restaurants in Santa Maria, this is a truly awful place - avoid like the plague. It seems the norm in this town means waiting a while for your food (it’s ok, it’s laid back and you’re on holiday) and expect it to be overcooked (let’s assume they’re trying to be safe with food).

Given this, it took over 90 mins (from ordering, it took a while to even get a menu) for a very simple meal to arrive. It wasn’t at all busy (so no excuses about a stacked kitchen) and we ordered grilled fish (how can you get this wrong?!!!). So even if you were catching it to order it should still have taken less time.

Worse still, every time we asked about the food, they just smiled and said “no food for you”. What the hell kind of reaction is that?

We were just about to walk out when the food arrived. Completely overcooked - I mean nuked - like you had fried or baked a simple fish fillet for at least an hour. Completely dry. No apology. Not even an acknowledgment from them that this was not great service.

Oh and a stupid, stupid price for...

Food OK, service abysmal. The owners previously had a restaurant in a different location years ago that we used to frequent. Service & food was excellent. Since moving to new location over 6 years ago, staff and service have changed, and not for the better. Our third time tonight in 6 years as previous were so bad, it was desperation tonight for food what led us back. 3rd time unlucky. Got my food order wrong and tried to convince me that the spaghetti bolognaise served was in fact the Carbonara I had ordered. Did not take drink orders, had to ask. When wrong food delivered and replaced, had to ask for cutlery as previous was taken with food returned. Also had to suffer the cold stares of staff as if I was at fault for them getting the order wrong. The staff have no respect for the owners and no respect for the clients who pay their wages. Such a shame as the owners are genuinely nice people who rescue dogs and have lived on the island for years. If I was them I would retire and enjoy a peaceful and less costly...

Bad experience. I ordered an orange juice, a cheese toast and a cappuccino. There were not many guests in the restaurant. The juice came after 40 minutes, after more than a full hour they brought me a ham and cheese toast (but being a vegetarian I ordered cheese toast). After 15 - 20 more minutes (so in total 1 hour 20 minutes) they finally brought a cheese toast, but the melted cheese totally melted into the blue paper napkin that desintegrated, so that I had a blue cheese toast with a lot of paper sticking to it (you couldn't remove just the paper, so either you eat the toast with a lot of blue paper or you take away the cheese). They never brought the coffee. Everybody in the restaurant was waiting, many left in the end because they were so unhappy with the service and food. You should definitely work on your service, the kitchen, the procedures you use and also you should buy other napkins that don't get stuck...