Kafeine Cascais — Restaurant in Cascais

After reading the Time Out review for this place we decided to give it a try. I was hopeful for a nice Sunday brunch and we reserved a table. Upon arrival we were completely ignored for 5 minutes. The servers would pass by us, look our way and continue to go about their business. After a while, someone came up to us to say that things were looking "complicated". We nodded politely at his sharing and said that we had a table reserved. He looked at us and pointed at the reserved table inside as if we should have known and should have been seated without bothering to wait... OK... Off we went and sat after this nice introduction to "how not to treat your costumer 101". We sat down and chose our meal and after much back and forth from the servers to see who was going to help us, the one who came took about 10 minutes to take our order because he could not manage his Ipad properly. The coffee came first but no spoons nor sugar. They didn't seem to notice. We had to ask a few times before we got it. Now, I must say the coffee here is really good. Happy with the coffee. Now on to the meal. The brunch arrived missing the feta, and the ham. I ordered mine without the ham but my husband ordered his with. OK, back to the kitchen to fetch it and they come back with bacon. No more ham. Now, we have the food in front of us and where are is the cutlery? Again, no one seems to notice we hadn't any. I ask for it and for olive oil and get a eye roll from the server. Cutlery comes but no olive oil. Have to ask another server for it. Pancakes come together with the first course and sit there and get cold. When we finally get to it we had to ask two servers - again - for plates and cutlery. As for the food, it was all right but nothing to write home about. Costumer service was non-existent, laughable really. The crew at this place should not have gone into the hospitality business. They missed their call big time. Kaffeine is scratched...

Short summary - good restaurant, tasty food, bad personnel. The issue also might be that we don't know Portugese and so spoke English. We went there for a brunch with my wife and my little son. We ordered a "child burger" and got some minced meat cooked outside and still pink inside + couple of salad leaves. We expected a bit different dish (we've ordered child burger is a lot of places) but were convinced by personnel that it's what we ordered so we gave it back (we were charged for it anyway). We'd appreciate to be warned that burger is just meat and asked how well it should be cooked if by default for kids it's cooked as medium rare. Coffee and cake for the same person were brought to us like 40 minutes apart. Also we were brought wrong dishes. Waitress brought a totally white cake and being asked whether it's a chocolate cake that we ordered said yes. Afterwards this cake silently disappeared from our desk and in 10 min we were brought another all-black cake this time. I ate pancakes that were different from what I ordered and found out about it only when thay brought me the right ones afterwards. Despite all the troubles with waiters, the food is great and the restaurant is nice and...

We had high hopes for our visit to Kafeine, drawn in by its beautiful location right in the harbor of Cascais. While the setting is lovely, we unfortunately left feeling quite disappointed with our overall experience. The main issue was the service. We tried to be patient, but it was a struggle to get our orders fulfilled. We asked for water twice, but it never arrived at our table. Similarly, a glass of wine we ordered was forgotten. It felt like the staff was perhaps overwhelmed, and we were simply overlooked during a busy period. This continued when it was time to leave, as getting the bill also took a rather long time. By the end of our meal, the initial excitement we had for our visit had faded. After we left, I looked up some reviews and noticed something that added to our disappointment. It seems the management often uses a very similar, standardized response to negative feedback. It just made our experience feel less like a one-off bad day and more like a recurring problem. Kafeine has so much potential because of its wonderful location. We truly hope the service can one day match the setting, because an experience that should have been a highlight just left us...