Restaurante Fajã dos Padres — Restaurant in Ribeira Brava

First off, you have to pay 12€ per person to use the cable car and access the area - which as a Portuguese person I find outrageous - this is clearly aimed at milking those tourist wallets. The gardens around the restaurant are beautiful, with loads of fruits and the occasional flower. The rock beach is small but nice, and the view is great. All in all, might be worth the 12€ if you are on a holiday.

And then you get to the restaurant. We had booked a table of 4, 2 of us being vegetarian. The menu has a dedicated section with vegetarian dished (which is nice), the last of which is... a salmon bowl. Despite the abundance of fruit trees around the restaurant, I couldn't find the one where salmons grow, so we ordered the couscous with vegetables, and the pasta with vegetables and fruit. The other two people ordered tuna steak and a "prego" (a Madeira traditional dish). Because of dietary restrictions, we asked if the tuna could be served with boiled potatoes as a side, to which we were told that it must come with corn and salad, and you could only order the potatoes as an extra. While I am ok with the place setting its own rules on how flexible it is with "special requests", you'll be hard pressed to find a place in Madeira (or in Portugal) that would refuse this sort of request. We then asked if the corn was vegetarian (it is traditionally cooked with pig fat), to which the lady said "it's not made here, so I don't know" followed by a silence, as if this sort of answer was acceptable... I then had to gently remind her that if she doesn't know, it's her job to find out.

After waiting a bit (longer than usual but nothing outrageous) our food arrives. Both the vegetarian couscous and pasta lacked any flavor or proper care. Basically someone boiled them with no (or very little) salt or spices, threw a very small portion of pre-fried vegetables (nothing to write home about either) in, mixed, and to the table it goes. While the vegetables themselves were tasty, they were too little to add any flavor or consistency to the dishes. Also, the pasta was supposed to come with "vegetables and fruits" as per the menu, but there was no fruit in sight. The other 2 "regular" dishes were "ok, not good nor great", my friends told.

We ended up leaving substantial portions of couscous and pasta on the dish. When picking up the plates, the waiter showed no concern or interest to know if the food was to our liking, or if we had left so much of it on the plate because of any reason in particular. They just asked if we wanted coffee or desert, and moved on to the next table.

Long story short: the cablecar may be worth taking if 12€ for a 20mins garden walk is something you enjoy, but do yourself a favor and find somewhere else to eat. There are very similar beaches to this one all over the island, and while nothing in the restaurant is fundamentally bad or wrong, it's just so easy to find so much better for less or the same money, that there is no real reason...

Very, very heavily overrated by influencers and travel blogs. This isn't a "hidden little gem", but a bit of a tourist trap. Service is slow and while their selling point seems to be that they cook with local and biological products, the food is very bland and I'm pretty sure parts of our dishes just came from supermarkets and cans. I'm surprised it gets as many positive reviews as it does because it's honestly just roadside restaurant quality, although maybe the restaurant used to be good and simply buckled under its own popularity.

Yes, the garden is beautiful and the view of the sea is absolutely amazing, but it's a 12 euro per person trip down and the whole complex is, all in all, quite small. Is it worth paying that price on an island with so many other great botanical gardens, forests and viewpoints? In my opinion, absolutely not.

Unless you're really into sustainable agriculture, just go do a nice hike literally anywhere else on the island and save yourself the...

We were super excited to visit the well spoken of spot, especially because of the unique experience of getting there by cable car. However I can say we were welcomed with the best service, the staff are extremely unfriendly, unwelcoming and a clear example of poor client or guest relations. We stood in the middle of the restaurant area waiting to be served, when approaching a waiter she simply cut me off while speaking and said I’m coming now, I eventually reached out to someone else who found us a table. If I were I restaurant owner I would want to hear both good and bad reviews, and hopefully if the owner reads this review, they can perhaps use this feedback to educate the staff on customer service skills. This poor customer experience I personally experienced on not one but two occasions, but nonetheless the food was god, the lapas are spectacular and the best I’ve had on the island. The polvo was slightly tasteless and could’ve used extra salt, vinegar...