The Dining Room restaurant at Quinta da Casa Branca — Restaurant in Funchal

We wanted something special for our last day on Madeira, and that restaurant was special indeed.

First, for those that may get confused as we were. Once you reach the reception, you need to walk through the garden to reach the restaurant, it's at the far end of the garden.

The restaurant itself is fantastic. The service is friendly but very precise. And there was live music all evening long.

We went for the set menu, skipping the wine pairings since we don't drink much wine. The food is just as we like it. It's tasty, it's interesting, but it doesn't try to be a piece of art. The starter, pastry with cottage cheese and salmon was delicious. Fish with couscous was even better. And the steak was just perfect.

Fantastic food, fantastic service and atmosphere. Highly recommend that place. Price was about 80EU per person, which included four glasses of wine. We did end up drinking quite a lot of it, but that's just because we enjoyed that...

Unfortunately, the Michelin inspectors need to come to teach the staff how to serve a proper French set menu. They forgot to serve our wine pairing with the fish course, and forgot to serve the sorbet palette cleanser in between the fish course and the lamb. They didn't ask us what water we wanted and assumed still and then when subsequently ordered sparkling for the second bottle they mixed both together. They confused our sparkling and flat water when serving and did not clean and fold our napkins when we went to the bathroom. In the positive side, the sea bass fish course was acceptable for a Michelin restaurant and the pastry chef does wonders. Overall, I think the Michelin inspectors need to come back and downgrade the grading of the restaurant. In our experience, AVISTA is the only restaurant on the island that deserves a Michelin star.

Feel free to contact me for more pointers to come up to the...

Even though it seems like a high quality and service restaurant, it’s not very good. They will set aside the bottles of water and wine but forget to refill throughout the whole meal. They messed up the fish orders (we ordered Turbot but got something else). Between starters and main course, it took them more than 50’. Worst thing of all: portions were EXTREMELY little, ridiculously little, and I am not talking about the fixed menu, but about the a la carte dishes. Also, there are very little options as desserts and none of them looked good, so we didn’t order anything.

At the end of the dinner (11 pm), after everything was delayed because of them, they started closing the blinds of the terrace like they were kicking us out. Nevertheless, the gardens and surroundings are...