Restaurante Estradinho — Restaurant in Ponta Delgada

Food was good, but the service was by far one of the worst I ever received. And I am travelling and dining out a lot. While the popular places in town did not have any free tables left, here were enough tables left. It seems to be a restaurant locals like to go to. In general that sounds great, but not so in my experience. There was one table with ca 6 locals and another table with 2 Portuguese, not sure if local. I was seated and behind me a local family of 3 came inside. Even though I was seated first and told the waiter (or even owner) that I knew what I wanted, he made it obvious that he wanted to take the order of the local family first. Then I ordered my food and he did already turn around before I could order my drink. So I had to call him back. Even though his English was good enough, he involved the neighbour table with the 2. While they told me that they don't have a certain size, the waiter was already turned around again and I had to to tell him my order that way. 2 other tourists came in as well, but were able to speak some Portugese. First the family got their food, then even also the second younger waiter. The family and waiter already finished their food. The other locals all left already. Then the other two tourists got their food. The waiter was sitting down again, not even looking my way. Only when I threatened to leave withouth payment, he got up and not even half a minute later I had my food. Not without telling me that it was obviously taking longer as my fish was grilled. Then he proceeded to talk bad about me with the local family in Portugese. Ridiculous! Also he did not want to accept my card, only cash. He never even asked how the food was. He seemed to have forgot his job. Then he even made a point to be extra nice to the other guests. Never been disrespected like that before....

The restaurant is a tourist trap. All the negative comments are valid. Notes: 1- The restaurant serves inedible appetizers, making customers believe they're free, only to have them added to the bill at an exaggerated price. 2- The service is very poor, and the wait time for an order can exceed an hour. 3- The food is very, very, very bad. 4- When you're finished, and here's the catch, when you ask for the bill, you're surprised to find it's a manual bill. When you ask for the menu to confirm the prices, the waiter tries to confuse the customer, making them believe there's no menu currently available. Upon checking the bill, you find an increase of nearly 20 euros for no reason. The waiter then apologizes for the mistake, and coincidentally, more than one person wrote a comment with the same problem! 5- Payment is only accepted in cash! In short, I absolutely do not recommend...

This place was packed! With the great reviews, I can see why people were drawn in. We found the last two seats (shared with a romantic young couple- poor kids! lol. We invaded their privacy.). The bread and cheese was the best part of the meal. Sadly, I ordered spicy sausage and pineapple (thinking… ahh… Portuguese!) but the sausage was blood pudding (I think) and the pineapple was cooked but hardly and quite dry. The fries were horrible. I asked for a bit of hot sauce and was brought a hot oil but the oil was rancid. My friend ordered a veal chop that was salty!!! Incredibly salty. She couldn’t eat it. She also agreed that the fries were horrible. The salad was fine. The wine was great!! The waiter was very nice, too.

I think that, had we ordered fish maybe? We may have been happier. I just wasn’t quite in the mood for fish. My mistake perhaps.

Hope you have better luck...