Restaurante Donna Maria — Restaurant in Lagoa

If you have food allergies, or intolerances, or are vegan or in any restricted diet - avoid having dinner here.

Unfortunately, we did not have a very good experience dining at Donna Maria: when we first asked if they catered any vegan food, we were told we could have the vegetarian pizza, as the pizza dough was made with flour and water only. After sitting down, I asked if we could have any of the fresh pasta or if it had any eggs or milk; we were then told that the fresh pasta was the one done without eggs and milk, and that the pizza dough had eggs after all. We were then told we could order the "Linguini Al Tartufo" Macherroni Arrabiata", so we ordered one linguini and 2 macherronis. After tasting and having a good look at the linguini, we asked, again, if it really didn't had any butter or chesse in it; we were then told that the linguini had cheese and butter, so we asked for the plate to be taken away and for it to be made without any animal products this time. Unfortunately, the problems with the food and the lack of understanding on the restaurant's side didn't end there, as we were pretty sure that at least one of the macherroni dishes had some sort of animal based grease (most likely butter) in it, as you could smell, taste and see it in the bottom of the dish - after 9+ years eating a plant based diet, you know when your food has been prepared with butter, other dairy or eggs.

A very unpleasent and frankly dangerous experience: luckly, none of us has a strong allergy to dairy, or this could have been an even worse dinning experience than it already was.

On a positive side, we weren't charged for the espresso and for the grappa that I ordered at the end of our meal, which I understood as an apology on the restaurant's side.

It's a shame that in the midst of 2021 some restaurants do not train their staff properly in relation to it's food's preparation, ingredients, and food allergies. I hope the restaurant sorts this out and takes food allergies & diets more seriously...

Very disappointing. As long standing residents of Carvoeiro we were looking forward to trying Donna Maria for the first time with our family who were with us on holiday.Perfect position on the square in Carvoeiro overlooking the sea ...booking was easy and we had an excellent table on the terrace. To our surprise the menus when proffered showed that this restaurant was in fact a new outlet for Villa Medici which made us very wary. We'd had some bad experiences at Villa Medici some years before ( overpriced poor food ) and had never gone back. However , new outlet new experience ..or so we thought ! Height of holiday season ( July ) so very busy which could explain service being perfunctory .....but no surprise, menu as before expensive for a simple plate of pasta ..however superb location so you pay for the view ...but Whatever the price there is no excuse for bad food ...our family's simple pasta dishes were fine ....we 'stayed safe ' preferring lasagne for myself and my wife ...it was dreadful ....confirmed by my wife saying " your lasagne is better than this "...and I've only cooked it once ! So what was their Lasagne like ? ( bearing in mind we'd just returned from a cruise around the Med and had a superb lunch of Lasagne in a back street cafe in Sorrento for €9)....actually almost uneatable hence the 1star review ...,, stodgy baked cheese on top , no discernible bechamel sauce and very little meat ...just cheese pasta and some slices of that poor packet ham you can buy in the supermarkets topped with cheese and baked until completely dry !! So avoid this place is my advice. The restaurant will say "we never complained "... we did at the end of our families meal ...we did not want to make a fuss before as on holiday and lots of other people around. We prefer the quiet life. So we had hoped in their new superb location Villa Medici would have improved since our last visit some years before. Sadly not ...we will not...

Heading to the restaurant at 5pm for a drink (and having already checked that there were free tables on the terrace and tables only having drinks) we headed to the entrance to ask if there was a table on the terrace. Question to which we hear someone inside who asks if it was for food or drink. We said it was for a drink, (who knows if we could ask something to eat)... As we said it was for a drink, they told us that there was no table on the terrace and that we had to stay downstairs. We were soon disappointed because we felt that since we are not foreigners, in the manager's mind we weren't going to spend that much... wouldn't we?... Even so, we decided to sit down. After ordering some drinks, we asked for a glass of water to go with the coffees, which we were denied. They only sold it by the 1.5L bottle which cost €3 (filtered tap water, said the lady who served us). In short, we feel discriminated against because we are not foreigners (an increasingly unfortunate reality in our Algarve), demonstrating that there is still a mental smallness of many managers in Algarve. I've traveled a lot and I've never seen this attitude in other countries, it's a shame! As for the glass of water, although it's a very bad attitude as well , here is also the legislation in force for everyone's information. In Portugal is illegal to not give a free cup of water or they can charge it but with a lower price than the bottled water, (in Portugal 1,5L of bottled water can be less than 1 € they charged 3€) "De acordo com o Decreto-Lei n.º 102-D/2020, de 10 de dezembro, os estabelecimentos do sector da hotelaria, restauração e cafetaria passam a estar obrigados, a partir de dia 1 julho, a disponibilizar um recipiente com água da torneira e copos higienizados para consumo no local, de forma gratuita ou a um custo inferior ao da...