A Lota de Alvor — Restaurant in Portimão

Have been going to this restaurant for the past few years, and its always been great, however the service this time around definitely wasn't the best. Had I not taken into consideration the other times, my review would've been 1-2 stars.

Firstly, we got there at around 8.40pm and asked if there was place for the 3 of us to sit (already expecting to be put on a waiting list, as per usual) and we got told it was a 30 minute wait, OK, nothing out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, we were seated at 9.50pm, over an hour of waiting. We ordered right away, and, 50 minutes later, our food came. Now, this is, in my opinion, not great customer service. Had we been told we would have to wait for 1+ hour, we would've come back another say, but not only that, our food also took an outrageous amount of time to come.

Now, don't get me wrong, the food is great, it always has been, but after 2 hours of waiting, it really does not taste that good..

So, if you come across this review, I'd recommend you book a table (i think you can only book till 8pm, im pretty sure) and if not, then be prepared to wait! Hopefully others have a better experience than I did this...

Had dinner on the 4th Sept 24 Ordered one red prawn starter to share (for 2 people our decision) there was 1.5 inch of meat on each prawn, two mouthfuls. One tiger prawn to share for 2 other diners, which was small but OK. Which took the waiter 1.5 hours to serve. For mains, I think hake we decided on for 3 diners. It was over cooked, dry and cold. One of the diners just wouldn't eat it at all. The 4th diner had chicken was passable, very dry. Then the drinks. Our order was given for pink gin and tonic and malabu and coke. The pink gin was lemon !! Which arrived in decent time. Wine I think pino arrived a half hour later the other two were drinking the water ordered until it arrived. You may be thinking, why not speak up at the time. It was a celebration of my 70th birthday a treat by the other couple, who were embarrassed paid the bill and we left after 2.5 hours later. We've been going for 14 years and will definitely...

Worst customer service ever! We picked this restaurant coz we wanted fish and it had good comments in Google. We got there at 20:30 and booked a table which they said would be ready at 21:15, so we went for a walk and came back at that time. At 21:15 they said we still had to wait for a bit longer since the girls sitting on our table hadn't paid yet. Other tables were leaving but they said we couldn't sit at any other table but that one since we had two dogs with us. At 21:50 we asked if we could please sit at some other table, coz there were free tables at the terrace, but they said with the dogs we had to sit on the very corner and we are not going to sit till these girls are leaving. So finally we left at 22:00 after waiting for 45min, without eating and with free tables at the terrace. Unbelievable! Wouldn't recommend this...