Casa da Fonte — Restaurant in Albufeira

I had the pleasure of dining here for a special occasion. My food and beverage were well above the standard expectation of a celebratory dinner. Let’s dive in. Upon entering I was asked what type of seating I would prefer and was seated in a very appropriately placed table for my request. The host was very charming and had that genuine hospitable nature. If he was faking, he fooled me. A young lady came by to take my drink order and I mistakenly assumed she would also be my waitress, however the very same young man that greeted me was indeed my server as well. He patiently described menu options and typical ordering standards. Now keep in mind, this was a Friday night and had a dinner rehearsal party for a wedding the following day with what appeared to be about 30-40 people. My expectations of timely service was not at a high. However to my surprise my special requests ordering was delivered to me before I could finish my first glass of wine! I was enjoying music and chatter then BOOM! Here’s my food. Delicious Portuguese seafood! I ordered cataplana and the broth was so tasty. I literally had to push my seafood aside to sip the broth. Now in all fairness, if you have never had Portuguese seafood and are expecting anything that resembles the American seafood boil then you may get your feelings hurt. This is not the same, it is very clean authentic natural flavor with options to add additional seasonings or sauces which I did not do. Ok so they hit a home run with the entradas of bread, cheese, butter, sardine pate and olives as well as the overall meal! When my meal was served, a waitress took over. She took into account of my celebration and initiated a special dessert without question. It was a super surprise and did not go unnoticed. This visit my food was incredible, my wine and liquor stayed flowing and the personality of staff members were remarkable. I highly recommend this restaurant for food...

Let me start by saying that when I travel and visit new places, I consider local culinary art as a fundamental point of the trip itself. For this reason I don't stop in the first place I find, but I start looking for nice places that have above all local products. Well this is a not cheap fish restaurant And it was a big fake! I ordered a skewer of grilled fish which they call 'Fish kebab' for the modest amount of 27.50 euros, I am in the Algarve in Albufeira surrounded by the Ocean and what do I find like fish type in the ‘Fish Kebab’? Big Pieces of vegetables (onion, pepper) and instead of squid or octopus or other Ocean fishes I found the famous SALMON that all of us know that typically lives in the Ocean…, Just 2 small pieces of cod and 2 shrimp (not prawns), burnt and dehydrated shrimp because with an obvious difference in cooking times compared to Salmon. An absolutely NOT worthy dish for a seafood restaurant located on the Ocean! It's as if I went to eat at a Chinese restaurant and they gave me an italian margherita pizza. Not...

We were a group of 4 and had multiple meals. For starters 2 Fish soup, garlic prawns and garlic mushrooms which were all good. For Main dishes we had the piri piri chicken, tuna steak, squid and filet steak all with fries and salad. The fries were mushy and had barely any crisp. The salad was very simple and didn’t had any type of dressing like olive oil and lemon or something. The piri piri chicken was very good and well seasoned but also very small in portion. The tuna steak was also very good in taste, the only thing with that was that the fish wasn’t cleaned properly because the fish scales were still on the fish. The steak was just alright, I ordered it in medium and it arrived just like that. It just could’ve had a little more flavor. The squid was not good at all. It was bitter but also weirdly sweet at the same time. Also the intestines were still inside of the squid, which apparently is the normal way of doing it here.

Besides the food, we had to wait for a good hour or so until our food arrived.

The...