Borda d'Água — Restaurant in Almada

I was invited to borda d’água by friends and decided to give it a chance as it was my first time. I called one day before and the guy who picked up the phone (Jose, that’s the name he gave me) wasn’t so friendly as he could have been - I have been to Princesa and Casa Reia and it’s a completely different hospitality. Arriving in Borda d’água we requested a waiter from the beach beds regarding the sunbeds and the young man send us to an old man just on the front line of the sun beds, this one send us to the cashier inside the store. It means you walk a lot just to get a simple thing - which is a bed. I asked the price of the sunbeds it was 30 euros for two pairs of single beds, I asked as it was 5 o’clock and the bed services stops at 7:15 if I could have a discount, the guy in a rude manner said the price was the same regardless the time of arrival.(the problems is the way you say it)

Then I asked for a table and Sophia was really helpful and kind, showing the true hospitality. We sat and after a while Fernando came and took our order and took great care of us during the whole lunch time, for that I’m really grateful. Although I need to tell the place is not well decorated as the competitors, it looks quite messy and on the terrace you can’t actually see the sea. The sunbeds doesn’t have a good quality and the umbrellas is small it doesn’t protect from the sun at all. My friend gave a review while eating and guess what? The manager came to our table asking what happened as she mentioned the manager besides to cashier (not even a sorry or really a true understand of what happened)

Sincerely I would never come back to this place, I would recommend Coco beach instead, and if money is not a problem Praia Princesa is the beach club...

We decided to have dinner here last minute. My friend ordered the garlic prawns and sliced potatoes (4€) as a meal, since the prawn dish was priced at 15€ and we'd had the dish in other places and expected a decent amount of prawns for this price. She was brought a very small dish with 8 small shrimp and piled with pickles over it. The sliced potatoes apparently were actually crisps. We complained, they said the crisps were made on site, to which we responded, they are cold, are they made fresh? I mean, for a tiny plate of crisps, cold, to charge 4€ is shocking. They took them away, then brought the same plate back, which they heated in the oven - to pretend the crisps are fresh! I ordered picanha and my partner the Robalinho (sea bass). His was a small fish, though decent it was not super fresh or particularly big. We've eaten fresher and better for the same price. We also asked to see the fish (common practice in good fish places)and were told to get up and go look at the counter. We then asked if they could bring it to us, they seemed surprised. We were never shown the fish. They missed out items we ordered, but at least didn't charge us for them. My picanha was okay. For the price it wasn't a large amount of food - you can get all you can eat picanha in a better restaurant for this price (20€). Service was slow and inattentive. I saw a waiter goof around and scratch his balls. The only nice thing here really is the ambiance. Gorgeous place. Shame they have not been able to match that in food,...

If you know the owner, you get a table. Terribly disorganised service - they never write down names of the people that arrive for a table. What happens is that people that know the owner and the waiters jump the waiting list (if there was one). I witnessed 3 guests (greeting the owner and some waiters) jumping ahead while we waited for a table and the excuses they gave us simply made no sense. After we demanded a table they took an eternity to take our order. Eventually we left without ordering. What's worse is that one waiter told us that all this was "in our heads" and another confirmed that they actually do it but their hands were tied. We've been clients there for around 10 years and the service was never excellent and it's been getting worse. It's not the first time we saw this kind of thing happen but this time was just terrible.

We were with a friend and she said, "that was the first and last time for me". For us it was the last time, too....