Cidade Velha Rooftop — Restaurant in Faro

We went there last night with my partner. The food was pretty good, but the service was the worst I have ever experienced.

There were multiple issues with the service:

We first ordered our drinks and a cheese selection to accompany them. I also mentioned at the same time that I would take the “broken eggs” without ham, since I’m vegetarian. My partner wasn’t ready to order the main course yet. We told the waiter THREE times that we wanted our drinks and the cheese selection before the main course and that we would order the rest later. For some reason, he had a hard time understanding this, but I thought he eventually got it.

Halfway through taking our order, a group of three arrived. The waiter literally abandoned us to go take care of them. We were shocked by this behavior—you should always finish with your current customer before moving on to the next. This is basic professional courtesy. He even seated them at their table before coming back to finish our order.

30 minutes later, our drinks finally arrived—without the cheese selection. We pointed this out to one of the other waiters, who just stared at us blankly. When we told the original waiter again, he still didn’t seem to understand that we wanted the cheese as an appetizer (even though it’s listed under appetizers on their website). Another 20 minutes passed before the cheese finally arrived. To be fair, it was quite good. But when it came, we had no cutlery, no napkins, and no bread. We had to explicitly ask for each of these. First the cutlery came, and then five minutes later, a bread basket.

Another issue: no one ever cleared our tiny table. We were given four different menus, and even after ordering, they were left cluttering the table. I had to specifically ask the waiter to remove them. The same happened with empty cocktail glasses—they just piled up. When a new one arrived, the old one wasn’t taken away until we asked.

Then came the main course. Between drinks, my partner had placed his order, and I reminded the waiter that I had already ordered earlier. By then, I was seriously questioning their competence. Unsurprisingly, my partner’s dish arrived, but mine was missing. I had to explain my order again. He was halfway through his meal by the time mine finally came out.

At some point, my partner also asked for tap water. They brought him a single, half-filled glass—only for him. I mean, who does that?

Overall, while the food and pricing were decent, the service was extremely amateurish.

PS: If you’re hoping for a rooftop view of the city—this is not the place. There’s no...

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

What a shambles of a restaurant in a quiet time of year too. Me and my wife visited in late September 2024, very quite time of year for Faro, Portugal.

We went to this restaurant and from the moment of sitting down it was awful.

I’ll break it down per category:

Food- Completely messed up my order, unfortunately I am a picky eater and don’t mind shovelling the generic (lettuce, tomato etc…) off my food if they forgot to take it off as per my request, but when they drench it in the sauce I specifically asked to be left off, then it becomes an issue. It isn’t as simple as sending it back, because none of the staff really spoke English (which is fine, and I completely respect we were in their country, but if the food industry with such risks around allergies etc… at least make an effort)

Service - Awful, staff couldn’t speak English, young server was being bullied about by the older “men” who were the one’s actually making the mistakes and blaming her.

Got a bottle of beer with a glass, forgot to open the bottle. My wife ordered wine, forgot a glass. Food came, no cutlery.

And it wasn’t a quick fix, they took at least 3/4 mins to sort each problem. Our drinks went warm and food went cold.

Atmosphere, pretty nice. About the only good thing about it.

Not a...

Sadly, we were totally disappointed by this place. We were really looking forward to our meal, on the last night of our holiday, after reading the positive reviews, but it was a letdown on every level. Despite having a reservation, it took nearly 20mins to get seated. We ordered drinks quickly, given the delay,but everything seemed to take ages to arrive. In fact, we then waited over an hour for any food. We were so hungry we eventually requested bread (would have expected this anyway). It came with nothing so had to ask for olive oil or butter to accompany. We got oil but the bottle was empty. When the food did eventually arrive, it was very plain - shrimps in garlic sauce with no sides & a large slab of grilled chorizo, again no sides or accompaniment. The ceviche was nice, pork cheeks again plain. Given the price, we would have expected more from all of these dishes. We ended up eating as quickly as possible just so we could leave to go somewhere better. We were expecting...