Maré at Pine Cliffs — Restaurant in Albufeira

DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY. Never EVER been so badly treated in a restaurant. We came here for lunch for my partners 30th birthday to over indulge in what looked like a nice restaurant and to treat ourselves. We were ignored for 5 minutes at the front door so walked to the bar where we were further ignored by up to 3 members of staff. (There were actually more staff than customers in the restaurant) We felt there was something wrong as the staff were gesturing, giving us scathing looks and just completely leaving us sat at the table. When we were finally engaged by a staff member, it was a n incredibly rude older man complained straight away that we had to move as it’s a 4 person table, when his colleague told us where to sit. There was only 3 other couples in the whole restaurants. Literally 3 tables along there is a table of two on the exact same table. He then said it’s our fault for being barefoot and took us a to a small sign off the ground by the door where all 6 of the staff who ignored us could have said something beforehand. This is also a beach bar/restaurant! They are just a stuck up establishment who look down at you. We would have happily put our shoes on had we been greeted at the door when we waited. Thanks for putting a stain on my partners special birthday with your rude attitude and completely unprovoked nastiness. We are travel bloggers and will be sharing our experience across both of our socials and blogs about how you get treated at Mare. RUDEST restaurant I have...

The problem here is the prices, they are so high and the product does not reflect the price.

A small menu but a good variety none the less. We stopped for a drink but I was hungry so thought I would try a salad.

I picked a ceasar salad, it was 19 euros. 19. I thought there and then that I might be getting ripped off but thought I'd try it anyway. For 19 euros I expected the best salad I'd ever had. I did not get it. I opted not to spend another 6 euros to add chicken, 25 euros for a salad was definitely too much. Plus, it stated that it had bacon and anchovies anyway which was fine with me.

It came with 1 cherry tomato. Just 1, cut in half. A sprinkle of bacon crispies, 1 anchovie cut in half, and a scraping of parmasan. The rest was lettuce and dressing. 19 euros and this was what I got. It tasted OK but I had to ration each piece to avoid just eating dressed salad and nothing else, which I ended up doing anyway. I mean, 1 of each item, why? What need is there for that? The total cost of the items on my plate was well under 3 euros and for no apparent reason other than because they can.

So this turned out to be the most expensive lunch we had on holiday. 19 euro salad, 5 euro orange juice, 4 euro Pepsi can, and 15+ on coffee. All in it cost us 45 euros and was just a total rip off.

Service was nothing special, food was nothing special, prices were insane. The cutlery and glasses were also not particularly clean.

Save your money and go...

I'm in two minds when writing this review and assessing my rating. I have given four stars based on the overall package I.e. location, food / drinks that we'd ordered and standard of service; weighted appropriately. The location by the beach is great. The service was good. However the food / drink was overpriced but probably balanced by the premium location. We ordered the garlic prawns which came with a side of garlic toast; these were very good. We also ordered a large beer and a mango juice which were good, and a side of fries. Finally we had a caesar salad with additional chicken - this was disappointing because there was virtually no bacon, 5 thin slices of chicken and only 2 anchovies; so had we not order the additional chicken we would have literally just had salad! That being said the caesar salad was good but very overpriced at 20€ (16€ for the Caesar Salad and 4€ for the extra chicken). Finally we had some caramel gelato...