Restaurante Casal da Penha — Restaurant in Funchal

Once in awhile, you'll visit a country and find an absolute gem of a restaurant that's so good it makes you visit more than once on the same trip. In my 9 years travelling across Europe, this is only my 3rd such restaurant. Such restaurants must fulfil certain key criteria: 1) great food, 2) great service that makes you feel like family and 3) an environment that's homely, non-pretentious and authentic to that country.

Casal de Penha certainly fulfilled these criterion, and more. This restaurant was only a 3 min walk from our hotel but we only stumbled upon it on our last night in Madeira, and by accident as well, since the restaurant we had intended to visit was closed. I call this serendipity.

In Madeira, steak and seafood are their specialties and Casal de Penha does both with distinction. For starters, we had the piri priri squid, which was fresh, spicy and duly whet our appetite. We also had probably the best Bolo do Caco (Madeiran garlic bread) on our trip, which tasted even better when dipped in the piri piri sauce. Following our starter, I had the Madeiran steak skewers and my wife had their signature pepper steak, which is made from 4 different local peppers. Our steaks were excellent, well grilled on the outside and perfectly medium rare on the inside. What surprised us the most given the quality of the meat was that both were fillet steaks. We would have believed it if they told us we were having a porterhouse! The somellier also recommended a wonderful Madeiran red to go with our food.

For dessert, we had a banana and orange juice flambe as well as a traditional almond cream dessert with chocolate sauce. The flambe is done table-side, which makes for quite a theatrical viewing. Pleasingly, it tasted as good as it looked. We capped off the meal with some complementary fortified Madeiran wine, wistful that we hadn't found this place sooner.

The next day, we duly turned up at Casal de Penha at 11.30am hoping to grab a quick lunch and thankfully it was already open. Our waiter from the night before, Cristiano (affectionately dubbed "CR1"), was pleasantly surprised to see us and greeted us with a same warmth as he did the night prior. The best part about this restaurant is that the staff are equally passionate about their food and will ensure you get what you came for. Upon telling Cristiano that we wanted seafood, he duly recommended several dishes (while ensuring they were witihin budget) and based on his recommendations the night before, we decided to trust him wholly.

For starters, we had the Bolo do Caco with limpets in garlic butter sauce and mussels cooked in traditional Madeiran style. Cristiano also asked the chef (who is also the owner of the restaurant) to prepare some of his secret recipe piri piri hot sauce as a bonus on the house. He suggested dipping our garlic bread into the limpets sauce, placing 1-2 limpets on the bread, layering some hot sauce and consuming in one bite. Even typing this is making my mouth water. It was a divine combination. The limpets and mussels were oh so fresh and the portions were generous. At 9 euros and 13 euros respectively, they were a steal.

The star of the show was the main course, which were the large king prawns that were caught earlier in the day. These were perfectly cooked and extra fresh, as you'd expect. This was slightly pricey, at 30 euros for 3 large prawns, but it was worth it. Cristiano even brought us extra bread on the house to go with the prawns. Paired with their special hot sauce, which enhanced the flavours rather than overwhlemed them, it was a symphony in our mouths.

We ended our meal with some Madeiran honey cake with vanilla ice cream. The cake was fluffy and the ice cream was rich - delicious. We ended with espresso and some fortified Madeiran wine, which really encapsulated our emotions in a nutshell - bittersweet - sad that we had to say goodbye to Madeira but glad to have found such a gem that we'd inevitably return to sometime in the...

Probably one of the worst restaurants I have been to, especially ones with a Michelin reference. Let me go through all the points separately. We were delighted go be able to get a table without a reservation so I will not complain about seating or the atmosphere of the restaurant, but I do have to say that I‘ve never before came across such a weird behaving staff in a restaurant. One server is singing very loudly while cleaning off your table, while the other ones are seen whispering into esch other‘s ears. The other server was just plain weird and would not communicate on a normal level. It was honestly very strange.

Now regarding the food. From a restaurant claiming to be good and authentic with a Michelin guide mention it should be one of the easiest things to be able to prepare a good vegetarian and/or vegan dish, but what I got was atrocious.

First I was confused to be offered a burger as the only vegetarian, specifically vegan, option in a Portuguese restaurant, but I went with it, because I had to eat.

But what arrived was just a vegetable patty with no bread no toppings, making it anything else but a „burger“. The salad that came with it had no seasoning, no oil, nothing similar to a dressing, just dry. But not only was the dish confusing to look at, it was also extremely mushy, bland and completely tasteless. It felt like a toddler just learnt how to mix together some ingredients. When I told the server I could not eat this, because it was so bad, she just told me „but everything is fresh“ and wouldn‘t offer me anything else, literally anything and also would not apologize for this mess of a dinner. I was confused how stubborn everyone was, not willing to take criticism to heart and not trying to accommodate their unhappy guests.

To the rest of the food: The avocado vinaigrette is such a confusing dish yet again. Two avocado halves with random balsamic drizzle on top is nothing you want to see in a restaurant you find in a Michelin guide.

The bolo caco „garlic bread“ was billed twice even though we ordered just bread as „the second portion“. No second portion of garlic oil.

Since no accommodation for a better experience was offered, we wanted to take away the rest of our food, before the throw it away. Which then the server asked me why I would do that, if I didn‘t like it. Maybe because I will rather eat it later, give it to someone else or feed it to my dog than throw it away? That would be such a waste.

My friends who had the Paella for two persons, also wanted their leftovers for takeaway, but to our surprise, when we came home, there was only half of our leftovers in the takeaway box. I do not know, why the servers would choose to handle the situation like this by any means, but let me tell you as a person that also works in a restaurant: please take all the negative criticism you get to heart and stop replying stubborn messages to unhappy customers. Changing the menu or employing different staff would already change a lot.

I hope to come back some day and have my opinion of this restaurant...

Avoid Tuna Madeira Style and Meat BBQ Selection

I was extremely disappointed! It was by far the worst meal me and my wife had while in Madeira, irrespective of price. I have given this 3* rather than 2*, as we did not raise the issues with our meals when asked (hurriedly) by the waiter ...also perhaps we ordered the wrong dishes from the menu, based on the other reviews ( but in that case I am really struggling to understand why they are on the menu at all).

We had lapas (limpets) for starter, which I wasn't keen on but completely accept that they may not be to my taste, being the first time I tried them and my wife really liked them.

My Meat BBQ Selection (the most expensive option if I recall correctly), was a dry overcooked selection of meat, my assumption was that it would be a selection of smaller portions of their dishes from the menu, but it was definitely not the case, the beef in particular was well done and dry. I am certainly no chef, but I can with full confidence say that I could have cooked this far better myself.

My wife had Tuna Madeira Style, we were warned that this would be cooked medium-well ...similarly, my wife perhaps should have looked at other options with this warning, but you assume it must work well to be on the menu. Unfortunately it was tough, chewy Tuna ...my wife loves Tuna and had it on another couple of occasions in Madeira, this was by far the worst she had.

Based on the reviews of this restaurant, perhaps we just chose poor dishes, but please do yourselves a favour and take these off the menu in that case.

A note on the service ...all the staff appeared to be friendly and make an effort, but they were far too busy and overworked, leading to poor table service.

Unfortunately I did not take any photos, I felt it would be rude as I was clearly not pleased with and had left most of it...