O Farol — Restaurant in Portimão

Wow!

I have never been spoken to by any restaurant manager like I was in this place.

I made a legitimate complaint that the pan fried chicken was incorrectly described on the menu. It was breadcrumbed but not identified as such and my daughter doesn't like breadcrumbs so she couldn't eat it.

I was perfectly polite about it but did say that I didn't want to pay for it.

The obnoxious manager then came over and said, 'you think we can explain every little thing on the menu' and accused me of refusing to pay and asked if I thought I was the king of the Algarve or the king of England instead of, what I've been accustomed to in virtually every other of the many restaurants I've eaten in, politely acknowledging their mistake and taking it off the bill.

He then continued to accuse me of being rude when he was clearly the aggressor. To be fair, he did take the item off the bill but continued to be extremely rude as I was paying on the card machine. I did try and placate the situation by saying maybe something had been lost between the two of us in translation but he continued to insist it was I that was the rude one, at which point, I'll admit, I came close to losing my temper and gently tossed the card machine on to the table in despair.

He then squared up to me and issued a thinly veiled threat that if I had a problem, I was in his country now. Absolutely unbelievable.

As for the rest of the food, below mediocre, at best. Both the Portuguese steak and Tornado Farol style were very tough and not at all rested.

Personally, I would avoid this restaurant like the plague and I feel sorry for the staff, who were all really pleasant, who have to work under this guy.

One star is a VERY...

I came to this restaurant to drink some cocktails by the beach, I wasn't expecting a 10/10 margherita, but for the price and for the fact that it was the most expensive cocktail that they had I was definitely expecting something better than what I got. For some reason the margherita instead of liquid it came as if it was a kind of slush, maybe it's some new type of margherita I wasn't aware existed but nonetheless it didn't taste very good. After that I went to pay and that's when my mediocre experience came to be a bad one. A big family was having lunch there, and for the looks of it, they had drinks, food, etc. Like me one of the members of the party didn't enjoy the margherita and, after tasting it, she immediately sent it away hoping for a refund. When it came to paying a staff lady started shouting at them and about them to the other workers of the restaurant, including the owner. Claiming that if they tasted the drink they should pay for it, regardless if they liked it or not. To my surprise instead of reprimanding her, the owner started shouting at the customers as well while they were exiting the establishment. They paid for everything, and even praised the food claiming that the only problem was the drink, while being shouted at. After their exit, I heard the staff lady claiming that "she knew they were gonna be a troublesome group", I'm not sure if the comment was made through a racist lens, seeing that the family wasn't white, but at this point I wouldn't put it past them. Sorry but going to a restaurant and seeing the costumers being "verbally abused" doesn't aspire me to come back, even more when these customers were totally...

Aweful service! ZERO STARS!

We went to O Farol after travelling all day. Undecided where would eat, we looked at their outside menu, and it looked promising. One of the gentlemen greeting us at the entrance even invited us to look at their fish selection as I told him I was looking to eat their best fish tonight.

The waitress came out and we ordered our drinks as well as our dinner at the same time as we were starving from our long day. My wife ordered a grilled chicken dish with grilled vegetables. The young lady immediately stopped her and said she would need to check on the chicken. I didn’t get a chance to order yet. She came back out and said they were out of chicken and continued to walk away. SHE NEVER CAME BACK to get our orders. We waited for over half an hour while sipping on our drinks. We tried to get somebody’s attention so we could order but every server ignored us so we needed to leave at this point. Not one person paid attention to us to the point that we could have walked out without paying for our drinks and nobody would have noticed. I had to go to the counter and ask to pay.

Needless to say we found a better restaurant with much better service

VERY, VERY DISAPPOINTING ☹️

I strongly recommend to stay away...