A Venda — Restaurant in Faro

What happened to this place? I came here twice last year and expected just the same service and lovely local food this year. Instead, I was served something that looked like pork cooked 3 days ago with a layer of cold fat and pineapple pieces. But let me start from the beginning. They gave us this new drink menu that had what seemed like a lot of refreshing summer drinks in it with local fruit like Algarve orange. I remembered having a nice homemade tea last year, so went for the kombucha, the Algarve orange + blackberry water and the fermented pineapple drinks. I also asked if they had sugar in them because my mum is diabetic and I cannot handle processed sugar. They said no. Then they gave us a bunch of canned drinks (see picture) overly sweet with sugar listed as ingredient. We were very disappointed. Then one of the cooks came up to us and told us off for ordering too much food and asked us to reduce it (guess this could be a nice gesture, but she seemed weirdly grumpy while doing all this - maybe she didn't fancy cooking that much??) Then came the cold leftover pork and spicy tomato aubergine with 4 thin slices of aubergine (for 7 Euros???) The only dish I can truly recommend was the veal, which was well-seasoned and a generous portion. I asked for seconds. The rabbit and the gazpacho we found too acidic. The bean stew was alright, but nothing special. The vegan cheese did not come with extra bread and seemed really fresh and didn't have proper taste. There was a long waiting time between the dishes and we were oddly asked if we wanted more food before all of our dishes came. Now the venue. If you get an outside seat, great, but inside is quite warm and the atmosphere is not as nice. There's no proper booking system, we had to call them 6 times to get a booking. They also had no soap (!!!) and loo roll and they misunderstood when we asked them to replace it. Overall disappointing experience especially when compared to...

No table when we arrived but the waitress kindly booked us one in 30 minutes. The waiter came to take our order and gleefully announced that this was a ‘concept restaurant’ that served tapas-type dishes but were not finger food. The orzo salad was delicious, well made and tasty. Then came the octopus. Slightly over cooked in a sloppy brown bean stew with too much sauce. Then came a chickpea and cod dish which was covered in a rather awful creamy sauce. No taste or structure. The waitress had a look of disbelief when we said we didn’t like it. The fourth dish was so unremarkable, I can’t even remember what it was. All the plates were chipped, the waitress looked at me as if I wasn’t quite cool enough to be eating off a chipped plate. The decor was a lot of very bad artwork which was crammed on the wall, irrelevant books shoved onto bookshelves, presumably to add to the false ‘quirky’ look of the place. I felt sad for the staff having to serve very mediocre food. They didn’t look very happy and weren’t interacting with customers or with their colleagues. Poor food, poor service, pretentious decor. Very overrated place. As for the ‘concept’…. we still haven’t quite worked out what it was. If the chefs and the waiting staff work it out, they really need...

The WORST place you can go for dinner. The food is neither good nor authentic, they claim to serve tapas but it’s rather a main dish in size of an appetizer. Food looks horrible and doesn’t taste good. Bread is served in a stinky little fabric bag. Plates are broken and dirty (disgusting!). Service is not good - took a very long time to order, another very long time to serve and a much longer time until someone came with the bill. Then, they tried to scam us. Put more dishes on the bill than we ordered, and just when they saw that we studied the bill - they said there was something weird about it but still wanted to know what exactly we ordered. They apologized and came back with a new (correct) bill, but when I paid, they didn’t give me back my change!!! Horrible place! Cannot recommend to anyone with tastebuds. We left still hungry. This place is overpriced...