Restaurante Mercado Velho — Restaurant in Machico

Definitely would NOT recommend THE CATAPLANA (fish and seafood for 2). Maybe it is a treasured old recipe and I don’t understand it but all you get is a super overcooked pile of what otherwise would’ve been great selection of seafood and fish. The flaky mushy tired crabs, shrimp and fish are swimming sadly in a tomato & thyme watery broth - which is all you can taste, except for the flakiness. Oh and I just forgot, they have completely forgotten to bring us the rice that was supposed to go with it. Which brings me to the service. For this meal that I just described we waited an hour! with not even a sorry or any explanation, no one even checked on us. The waiter just brought the food and never seen us again, probably sent his colleague to collect the dishes when we realized we really didn’t want to eat any more. When we said what was bad she wasn’t even interested. The only guy who seemed to care was their 3rd colleague, another waiter, whom we had to bring to our table and asked him to pay - because we have been waiting again for almost 30 minutes. Overall horrible. But! the white Madeiran wine -...

This is a great restaurant to sit outside in the middle of Machico next to the park. We came here to eat during the Renaissance Festival since we have picky eaters. My daughter LOVED the kids chicken and fries. The chicken is a breaded and fried chicken breast. It was very tender and juicy. My husband was satisfied with his spaghetti and my chicken with sweet and sour sauce was grilled and tender and juicy. Our server seemed like he was annoyed with us, or just having a bad bay. We are human, that happens, plus we do not speak Portuguese yet. He was never rude though. Just very efficient. It was out 1st time here, so we didn't know what the procedure was for paying. My husband finally had to get up to ask. That was the only slightly annoying part. Other than that, we will definitely come back when...

We gave this restaurant several chances, but have now decided not to go back, for food, anymore. That's mainly due to the service. The staff is not paying attention. Will spare you the details from previous visits, for which they made up our for last visit. But yesterday loads went wrong again. We sat down at a not clean table which was emptied but we had to ask to clean it as well. Asked for the wine list and menus, they brought 1 menu??? We ordered tornedos, one rare, one medium and although that was mentioned on the bill, they were both medium. Food is good, but the service is far from good. Dear owner, we know each other, you are welcome to talk with me about it, but you really should do something about this if you want to maintain a...