O Almofariz — Restaurant in Funchal

This place should be condemned! DO NOT EAT HERE!

There are three things a restaurant needs to be good at, if not excellent: food, service and atmosphere. This "restaurant" succeeded in being absolutely appalling in all three.

Let's start with the positives regarding the food and drink: the white sangria and bottled water were ok. That's where it ends.

Where to begin at trying to describe how stomach-churningly revolting the food was?

Starters were both "melon with Madeira wine". They arrived as if it had been carved with a spade in 4 huge chunks although they tasted fine and seemed fresh. There was zero thought of effort given to even slightly improving the presentation as it was simply thrown onto a plate: a bowl would have been a better idea given the liquid that sloshed over the sides.

The main courses were like bad home-cooking at best. The pork wasn't the best ever, but it was swimming in a huge amount of very salty gravy. Chips were ok, but the veg were very overcooked and dissolved to mush just by looking at them.

Desserts: fruit salad was, well, fruit salad. It's difficult to go wrong there (fruit in a bowl, nothing else). The passion fruit dessert was inedible with a horrible texture. We were not sure what it was supposed to be or what it consisted of, but one small teaspoon was enough.

Service was an absolute disgrace. When we arrived the owner (I assume) didn't say a word: he just pointed inside then hurried off. We were supposed to find our own table, ok, fair enough. As soon as we sat down we saw how he was treating the staff: the junior staff looked terrified as he shouted at them in front of customers. He rushed around like a headless chicken shouting and yelling and smashing plates as a result. It was a very tense atmosphere and we were not at all relaxed.

If you have a dietary requirement you can forget about that. They hadn't a clue what gluten-free meant.

Although we left quite a lot of our meal we never were asked "was everything ok?" despite only eating a very small amount of most items.

Owner was very abrupt and unpleasant - we got the impression he wanted to take our money and get us out as quickly as possible. There were no pleasantries, smiles, thank yous etc.

The restaurant aircon units have thick black dust and dirt, wires were trailing about all over the place and it was a mess. However the worst part was the toilets: they were like something from a third world country (actually, I've been to a few and theirs were better). Lock on the door didn't work, there was no toilet seat, no soap and no towels to dry your hands. They were in an extremely poor state of repair.

The biggest issue was the smell of sewage in the restaurant which wafted through quite a few times. It was so strong and disgusting that my wife had to leave before she was sick. It was absolutely awful.

Top tip: if you do decide to go here and have bread given to you, refuse it, as you'll be charged.

I can honestly say that this was the worst eating experience I've ever had. Mediocre food, zero customer service and disgusting facilities.

My advice? The McDonalds nearby is infinitely better, or get a sandwich from the supermarket. Or don't eat anything. You'll...

The tourist menu is really good value for money. We had melon with parma ham for starter. In my opinion the Parma ham was too dry and too salty but maybe that's their way. For the main course we had filet of scabbard fish with banana and a grilled entrecôte. Both were very much too our liking. The scabbard fish dish had the perfect combination of sweet taste from Madeira's banana, salty from the fish itself and sour from the lemon. The entrecôte was perfectly grilled and no need for any kind of sauce because the meat was delicious on its own. For desserts we choose the caramel pudding and the passion fruit pudding. What we got exactly that, no more no less.. A cut off piece of pudding on a plate. Not exactly picturesque. The caramel pudding was not too our liking because it had orange or tangerine pieces in it and the texture was strange. The passion fruit pudding however despite just being a blob of pudding on a plate had a really thick and creamy texture with crunchy passion fruit seeds which made it really tasty. The waiters didn't speak good English but we managed to understand each other in the end. Sitting outside has a really great view but a really big drawback is that there is a door to an apartment house right beside the door to the restaurant so we had a lot of people walking past us to get in the apartment house. This was over all a good experience and...

I strongly discourage dining at this restaurant. We started with the "Lapas grelhadas" (Grilled Limpets), which were excessively dark, lacking freshness, and possessed a horrendous flavor with a really strange texture. If i hadnt had this dish previously in Azores and loved it I would never eat this dish again in my life. Moving on to the "Entrecote," the meat wasn't terrible, but the cooking method left it tasting as if it had been fried in old olive oil with remnants from previous burnt meats. My girlfriend ordered the "Espetada de lulas" (Squid skewers), which were overly salty and swimming in oil. Some squid weren't properly cleaned, resembling more of a squid-in-oil dish than espetada. Even the fries had an unusual taste. The tableware appeared unclean and poorly washed, extending to a dirty coffee cup. Despite initial skepticism about negative reviews, this, without a doubt, marks my worst dining experience in my life. Avoid...