Cais 20 — Restaurant in Ponta Delgada

I feel very mixed about this restaurant, but ultimately gave it 4 stars for the food. The atmosphere/service is very lacking - we went for a very late dinner, arriving at almost 2130. It was unclear who was supposed to be seating people as the main person doing so kept being pulled away to other restaurant duties. All the servers are constantly speed walking through the restaurant and haphazardly cleaning tables (I quite literally saw a server try to clean a table, accidentally swept the mayo to the floor, looked at it as he was running to the next table and realizing he didn't have time, and on his way back truly tossing the mayo from the floor back onto the table), getting food/drink to customers, etc. When the server actually stopped in with us he was very nice, but said it was like this every night, which I don't understand as sustainable. Also, the lighting situation is quite chaotic as well - one half of the restaurant is lit in warm light, and our side in cool white light. The patio lights basically shine straight into your face. The food, though, is amazing and actually came relatively quickly. We got the limpets (great texture, big quantity), mussels escabeche (very flavorful in the stone pot), and the fish of the day (very tender, veggies were good too, some of them are cooked in a foil packet in lots of butter) - all were excellent and I'd highly recommend. For dessert, we got the cinnamon ice cream as recommended by the server and wooooow it was good. Tasted like a creamy cold tiramisu almost, and not overly sweet. Someone else on here said that they will be dreaming about the ice cream and they're not wrong. It has cookies or something mixed into it I think. We also got a fresh mango for dessert which perfectly complemented the sweetness.

Overall we left feeling very satisfied with the food, hence 4 stars. However, in the beginning before we got our food I probably would've given this place 2 stars. So just go in not overly...

We arrived with a reservation and left with regret.

Despite booking in advance, we stood at the entrance for about 10 minutes with several other guests, completely ignored. No staff welcomed us or even acknowledged we were there. Eventually someone came over and seated us well past our reserved time, with zero sense of urgency or professionalism.

Once seated, the experience quickly went downhill.

One plate was missing. One menu was missing. The table was not properly clean. The atmosphere was overwhelmingly loud and chaotic, making it difficult to even talk at the table. It felt more like a cafeteria than a restaurant.

The food was no better.

My octopus dish came served in a small plate, completely drenched in oil. It was swimming, quite literally, and tasted of nothing but grease. My sister ordered a prego sandwich. The steak was so thin it barely qualified as a portion, while the fried egg on top was larger than the meat itself. Her boyfriend ordered an entrecôte, but what we received was not an entrecôte at all. It was some generic steak, served practically raw to the point of being blue inside.

We sent it back, assuming it was just a mistake. It came back burned on the outside and still blue inside. No improvement whatsoever. At that point, we stopped eating altogether.

When the bill arrived, the “entrecôte” which was sent back twice and never touched was still included. We raised the issue politely and were met with coldness and dismissiveness. No apology. No thank you. The staff barely spoke and seemed irritated that we were saying anything at all. Eventually they started arguing with us instead of addressing the issue.

We paid and left.

This was, without question, one of the worst dining experiences we have ever had.

Final thought: if you are hungry, eat literally anything else. At least you will know what you...

We ordered 4 different meals, one of those was an Entrecôte. The Entrecôte was ordered medium, it arrived rare and we kindly asked to redo it medium. They didn’t apologize or even acknowledge us and returned the Entrecôte still rare but this time around with a burnt outside layer… We asked to return the Entrecôte and get another dish. Mind you, there was not a single bite taken off the Entrecôte and we never got a single apology, instead we got rude looks and annoyed attitudes. When it came to paying you would expect that the Entrecôte would be taken off the bill since there was not a single bite taken off it and we specifically asked to send it back due to cooking issues. Well, they kept it on the bill and when asked about it tried to tell us that this is what a medium Entrecôte looks like…. while having ignored everything we said before and only starting a discussion when it came to the bill. I told him I would obviously pay but was disappointed in the way we were treated, he left and ignored us. It seemed to us like the Entrecôte was not even an Entrecôte since it had quite a lot of fat and was rather thin also we think the meat was frozen which is why the outside was burnt and...