Cafetaria Portinho — Restaurant in Calheta

We hadn't been to this bar for a few years, but I remember how wonderful it was. The staff had been lovely and welcoming.

Today was disappointing, I persuaded my husband to stop as I was looking forward to a nice glass of cider or two.

The waitress was dismissive and rude. She made me repeat my Portuguese, I had said we only wanted drinks and then told us we could sit downstairs. Both tables were occupied, so she said inside. It was a beautiful sunny morning! Very quiet with plenty of seating upstairs.

She said " upstairs food only " and then proceeded to ignore us. Now there was no apology, no understanding, if she had said ," sorry you must order food to sit upstairs " or similar- in Portuguese, I would have understood and we might have decided to get a sandwich, I was thinking about chips, but we were simply dismissed!

We are not...

The restaurant was mostly empty on our arrival, we had to wait for waiter attention for a really long time, after which he called us to get the the menus in the middle of the stairs. The portions sizes were not true to the pictures and the food was made from frozen produce. While we were eating the waiter started to move empty boxes and repeatedly hit us with a door. Asked for suppliments such as salt, never got it. Asked for a cheque after we were finished waiter told us to go downstairs and to tell the teller our table number. Teller stood around looking at me and didnt bother coming to us for the cheque. Chef had to come from the kitchen to hit in the order we had.. We do...

Don't waste your time here. There are lots of places in the island where you can eat way better at same price range. Pictures look nice and lots of positivr reviews was what drove us here. We eat choco frito, lapas and Prego em Bolo do Caco (this lasy one was terrible, couldnt even eat it, plus it wasnt even the original typical breath, but some poor imitation). Service is bad, despite we complaint about the bad sandwich that we didnt eat, they end up charging us for it. It was 4.5eur, no big deal, but at least would have been thoughtful. Terrible, just terrible. Everyone is nice is Madeira... but not at this place. I'm praying for no food...