Riviera Cake Shop — Restaurant in Albufeira

Rude staff who don’t care about their clients. To add gravy on top of the meat, I even wrote this below email to the owners 20 days ago. They didn’t even bother to respond. I wrote because I care but they don’t care.

To the owner of Riviera Pastelaria,

We are frequent clients of this coffee shop because it is elegant, good quality and clean. We always come as a group of 4 or more people. We always experience unfriendly staff, either on our table or to tables next to us. We were always wondering how this elegant, prestigious, and well reputed place has unfriendly staff until we met the manager today (Mr. Herminio). We entered and he saw us but completely ignored. We were a group of 5, so we needed to push two tables together and we asked about one that was not yet cleaned. He rudely while walking away pointed at another table and said “take those, I don’t have time to clean”. We pushed the tables together ourselves, and sat down. He came to take our order. We asked for an omelette with ham, cheese, and mushrooms. He rudely said “no no no we don’t have mushrooms” while waving his hand aggressively. I said ok that’s fine and then asked for two fried eggs with bacon. He very rudely said “we don’t have this! I will bring you the menu” and he aggressively walked to the kitchen and slammed a menu on the table. Standing with hands on his hips, he said “this is our menu”. I said “we come every week at this time and order the same”. He very rudely said “no no no no, this is the menu now”. I said “I want to see the manager.” He said “I am the manager.” I said “ok, let me speak to the owner.” He said “the owner is not here.” Here I told him “ok, we will leave and I will write to the owner.” He said “do you come every week and take fried eggs? “ and I said “yes, every week”. And we left without ordering anything.

I am writing this email to you because we really like riviera and it is a shame to see that you might be losing your clients because of this...

What an awful place. It was comical just like Faulty Towers. Arrived wanted to order coffee & cake. Picked out our cakes. Then, I was told to go stand around the corner near the coffee machine. The staff just looked at us. We waited and waited eventually told us to go get a seat and told us order coffee at the table.

The waiter walked past about 3 times not serving anyone but was just walking around aimless. Eventually he decided to take our order. Which we had no menus given. Order 2x coffees and he took our cake ticket.

Then walked off and just stopped looking into blank space.

Finally our coffee & cakes arrived and this is where the fun started.

What could be described as a quite balcony was ruined by the noise of a neumatic drill shaking the floor. The hotel must of had some work going on underneath the balcony. It was quite uncomfortable. We finished asked for the bill and was told to go to the counter by the door. The girl on the till had no clue what we had ordered dispite telling her 3 times. The manager came over and asked what we had we explained 2x coffees 2x pastel de nata and a orange cake. He seemed even more confused. At this point it was too funny. It was like they left Manwell in charge for the day.

The funniest thing was after telling them several times what we had the still got it wrong. Well if you don't want to charge us for the cake that's your problem.

We left quickly and laughed all the way back to our hotel.

Free cake has never tasted so sweeter.

Cheers....

UPDATE 06.06.2022 - how time changes things. Not sure what changed in the past couple of years, but this has now become one of our "go to" sweet treat places. The apple pie (the one with the full top & bottom crust) and the almond pie are our favorites. Husband likes the pastel de natas too. Suggest you pass in the cookies, we've tried several and they are just okay, tend to be a bit dry. The chocolates are pretty pricey, which is weird because everything else is very reasonable.

Staff is more friendly and engaging. Maybe they are starting to recognize us or maybe we look more relaxed and friendly too? Either way, a great place to grab a sweet and coffee.

One of these days we will try the food too, the plate of the day menu always looks interesting.

(This post from 2018/2019) Third visit (November, February, April). Wide selection of pastries, all are good that we've tried but nothing spectacular. Wait staff are polite but not overly friendly. We know lots of people that rave about this place, just not our...