Anfiteatro — Restaurant in Ponta Delgada

I am confused. This is the restaurant of the tourism or gastronomy school??? How can this even be?

We came to celebrate a birthday - hoping for something extra nice. What we got was worse then had we gone to a normal restaurant. The service was super slow and unfriendly, the atmosphere catastrophic and the food average at best. First they had not prepared the table according to our booking. Luckily it was near empty, so no issue. Then it took for ever to order, even longer for starters to arrive and when the mains finally came they arrived with such dramatic delays that the first people where almost done eating when the last got their food. I had the franceshinha, and boy...how can you make that so boring and sad? Its such an easy dish?

My favorite was when they locked the door and started to switch off the lights to make people leave, while we were still waiting for our Espresso. Mind you, we were only still there because the service had been so slow - not because we wanted to...

Beautiful panoramic sea view from the dinner table. Service was attentive and courteous but a bit unpolished, as one would expect from a restaurant staffed with cooking school students. The beer and lupine was excellent in taste and presentation. The braised parrotfish was cooked and seasoned just right. The creamy fish rice was clearly inspired by tom yum soup, but was not creamy, fish, or spicy enough. The cheese board was generous in portion and tasted acceptable at its price point, but the inconsistently cut cheese and bread reflected the student skill level. The tempura squid was a disaster and would not quality as tempura at all. Overall what one would expect from student chefs, and we had a good time....

As indicated, this place is run by high school students (it's technically a training facility), so you sort of need to embrace the youth with all its pros and cons - slightly nervous, a little forgetful, a lot experimenting. Asian-fused traditional Azorean dishes, spiced sangria, dessert looking like a monument. In the end, everything tasted great, so if you have understanding for imperfections like not finely grated soup, you cannot go with anything but 5 stars (I'm not a big fan of Asian cuisine, but those touches just made a...