Casa Nostra Açores — Restaurant in Ponta Delgada

If other restaurants are full....but in short, better go somewhere else.

We had the tasting menu with wines. Starter was a pear capacio with nuts, cheeses and lemon/lime. The pear was unripe and positively cardboard. All else was nice. Then tortellini with tomato sauce. The sauce was fantastic, the tortellini unfortunately dramatically undercooked, to the point where the knife struggled. Then steak with mushroom sauce and potato mash. Very nice. Last pear cheese cake and chocolate mousse. Ok. The arrangement of the food was sadly better than the food itself.

We got a free desert wine after not finishing the pasta. All the wines and the desert wine were nicely chosen. Some had been open a bit too long and oxidated heavily. But hey, 25€ wine accompaniment. So that's OK.

Meanwhile the service was very friendly indeed, but overwhelmed and naturally unable to help the food. Biggest downturn after the food were the glasses from a dishwasher clearly missing something to function well and the sticky table. A few other things are off, cables laying around, floor has been patched with wrong colour wood imitation...but hey. That's OK and not part of my rating.

I think this is a tourist trap. No local will go here, certainly not for the prices asked. It's a shame, because the layout with the open kitchen is so nice.

Can't give more than 2 stars given the food issues. Will not go again for...

We made a last minute booking tomcome here on our final night in Sao Miguel, and it was a fabulous experience to finish off our holiday. The restaurant is a comfortable temperature and well decorated - it has a high-class feel which is sleek and modern and yet still warm and cosy. I love the open kitchen aspect and I really enjoyed watching the chefs at work. The wait staff were extremely friendly and attentive - they were helpful with suggestions when I was stuck between food choices and offered insight into each dish. We were also able to have a laugh with them which added to the overall atmosphere of the restaurant. The food itself was incredible - high quality, delicious and beautifully presented.

One small criticism was that two of the seafood pasta dishes weren't available - which is fine, plenty of other choice - but we weren't told this as we sat down and therefore I had picked one of these and was only informed it wasn't available at the point of ordering. The exact same thing then happened with the table next to us a few minutes later. So just to inform customers of anything that isn't on offer straight away...

We went to Casa Nostra because of the nice look and have been blown away by the amazing food. If you are on the island this is a must do location for fine dining. We ordered the Carte Blanche 5 Course Menu. One small downside: there wasn‘t yet a wine pairing offered - definitely something that we would have loved to order. But then the food was really amazing. First course cured trigger fish with something like a mayonnaise colored with squid ink. Great starter into a very great menu. Second course (my favorite) was warm and cold octopus. Afterwards we have been surprised again with a great fish dish (my gf favorite but can’t remember what fish it was). Our last favorite was the pork bbq. Still quite solid and very likely also fitting the the overall journey of local food but didn’t really matched the other dishes. And the closing was a pear mousse in form of a pear filled with some pear jelly.

We loved it and wish the chef an the entire crew a lot of luck for the future. We will come back once we‘ll be...