Aconchego Restaurante Bar — Restaurant in Funchal

Our experience at Aconchego was magnificent! From the soup to the steak, and the sunset views to the dessert, everything was top-notch. I enjoyed the (very large) tomato, onion, and egg soup as a starter. I was expecting more of a pureed tomato soup, but it honestly had more of a french onion soup flavor, with a few notes of tomato. It was herbaceous and delicious! For an entree, I had the golden bream fillet with mushroom and saffron risotto. The crispy skin on the ample fish portion was a highlight of a very flavorful dish. A squeeze of lemon really made the flavors pop. My husband ordered the filet on a hot stone, and enjoyed every perfectly seared bite! The caipirinha, house rosé, and house red wine were all tasty accompaniments to our meal. For dessert, he ordered the house dessert (a caramel brownie with ice cream), and I had the petit gateau (a chocolate lava cake) with ice cream. I loved the gateau -- it was perfectly gooey and deeply chocolatey.

We had a delightful evening, and will likely be back for another meal before we depart!

We have been staying in the Lido neighborhood, and enjoyed a very leisurely stroll through the Saõ Martinho neighborhood (with a stop for a snack and a drink) along the way. We took the route 1 bus back to our hotel, as there was a stop just up the road from the restaurant. If you're on the fence about going, I highly recommend you do! It's an excellent meal with good portions for the price, and the sunset views are...

Service was terribly slow for the amount of people in the restaurant. We spent about 2 hours here, our starters took over half an hour to arrive with it only being some deep friend sausage (alheira) and some garlic bread. The entrees were passable, two of us had the fish and thought it was tasty. The stuffed chicken over risotto was over-cooked and very salty.

Our drinks were asked to be refilled once during the entire meal, we were out of water and alcohol halfway through our sit down and refills or consideration was never realized by our server.

We had asked for a cab after the meal and the manager told us to wait and he will let us know when it had arrived. We waited over half an hour and eventually I got up from the table and went outside to check and noticed the taxi driver had been waiting there with the fare running the whole time. The taxi driver made it right, but it felt like we were set up for getting ripped off on our way home.

Overall it wasn’t a good experience and felt a little disrespectful. Unfortunately this was based off a recommendation of our host that...

The Good: View is great, especially if you are cliffside. The sound of the ocean may be the best part. Service is friendly, and street parking easy. We were able to get a “reservation” an hour before arrival.

The Not So Good: The food was not great; we found it very bland and uninspiring. The “tapas” included Doritos and very lemony “guacamole,” the combination with other odd items made us feel gross. The staff push a lot of upsells, the menus are default in the most popular tourist languages, there were no local patrons and the decor was “cute” but very tacky (must be the owners daughters water colors?). We saw a massive rat run next to our table (this is pretty normal for any restaurant on planet earth which is open-air) but the place felt rather unclean.

It was a strange vibe, very touristic and unless you’re right against the oceanside I wouldn’t consider it worth a stop. Easily could have had a better review if the food wasn’t so elementary in flavor...