Quinta dos Sabores — Restaurant in Ribeira Grande

I called Quinta dos Sabores to make a reservation for our last night in São Miguel. I spoke to, I believe one of the owners. He took my information, including food diet etc and told me to wait for between 30 and 45 minutes and he would call back at tell me which time, 21.30 or 22.00 worked better for the reservation. At 21.30 I still had not received a call and I called back. A woman, his wife, picked up the phone and told me that, for some reason, it was now not possible to serve us that night. She muttered about 20 reasons, all of which made no sense and were blatant lies, simply. If a restaurant doesn't want to serve any costumers for some reason, they should tell them when they cannot book, not make them wait and then lie. The woman then promptly hung up on me after rudely shouting that it was impossible to serve us. As it is incredibly disrespectful to hang up on someone, I phoned back and asked the woman if the call had been dropped. She lied and told me it had been. I then asked to speak to her husband who I had spoken with originally. I asked him why he had guaranteed a reservation an hour ago that he did not want to fulfill; and had not called to inform us that it would not be possible. He lied and told me he had tried to call many times, although I had had 3G the entire time and had no missed calls. He then angered and said he had a busy restaurant. If you have a busy (but not full) restaurant; and you refuse to serve paying customers, you really have no right to be in the restaurant business... By this time it was almost 21.45 and basically all other restaurants on the island were preparing to close.... To the owners of Quinta dos Sabores: you truly ruined the last night of our Azores holiday. You should be ashamed of yourselves and your lack...

I had reserved dinner with wines at Quinta dos Sabores several months prior to our recent vacation in the Azores. I liked the idea of dining so close to the production of some of the food we would be eating and to supporting this kind of enterprise. As I hope our photos illustrate, the grounds, the food and wines were all lovely and we enjoyed speaking with Inês (the co-owner, who greeted us and later with Paulo, her husband). We had a leisurely meal, stopping between courses to walk on some of the farm as the sun set. But the real exceptional moment was after we left the restaurant and attempted the Google recommended route back to the place we were staying. This turned out to be a private road, requiring a 4 wheel drive...in attempting to turn around our rental car was wedged in front of a gate on one side and a bank on the other. We left the car and walked the approximate mile (in pitch black darkness) back to the restaurant. One person was left and closing up but he called Paulo to help us. He drove us back to the spot and figured the car could be freed by his putting his weight on the front of the car and pushing off the wall by the gate while my husband gunned the engine and finally freed the car. This effort on Paulo's part was exceptional as it was nearly midnight when we returned to the restaurant. He saved us from a tremendous headache involving a rental car. If you read my review and enjoy this restaurant, please thank Inês and...

Our experience was just ok... The grounds are certainly beautiful and we enjoyed petting the very friendly horse on the grounds, but it doesn't seem like it's much of a functional farm anymore, so farm-to-table food seems less accurate. Some of the food was excellent (white fish + vegetable dish was the crowd favorite) and some of the food was very bland/uninspired (tomato soup was the biggest disappointment... worse than canned Campbells. Not even fresh basil on it). It was a fun experience but at the very high price, I expected really great food, and it was just ok. The vegetarian alternatives were quite bland and still the same price... pretty uninspired meals (ex: lentil balls). I also wanted to hear more about the story of the food... where it came from, what was grown on the grounds, etc. but there wasn't any of that. Just, "here is what's next --- it's a tomato & basil soup. I hope you enjoy it." Also, they have a wine paring, but give no information about how/why each wine pairs with the food. They just serve you 5 glasses of wine and pour the glasses in between meals with a similar, sparse description... "here is a local red wine from a winery down the road. I hope you enjoy it." I left feeling like we overpaid for the quality...