Frango da Guiia Garajau — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

Very nice food, spoilt by poor service. Ok, it was Valentine’s Day and very busy. It seems the staff can’t handle a full restaurant - we looked here when we first arrived in Madeira and the place was empty, probably as it’s quite a bit more pricey than down the street. The waiters appeared rushed off their feet. They brought chips to our table about 10 mins before the other food arrived, then brought a new plate of chips with the other food, which I had to ask to swap as clearly the waiter would have left us the cold ones. A couple next to us waited so long for their food that the guy went to the bar, paid for their starter and they left leaving their undrunk wine behind. Again, the place was full and the staff are not used to this so perhaps this can be forgiven. Two things cannot though: I witnessed one of the chefs handling raw baby chickens in the refrigerated section near the tables, with bare hands, and then moving the other plates of raw food around and finally closing the door with unwashed hands. Towards the end of our meal someone in the outside area started smoking a cigar. Our table was next to a door that led to outside but was closed. The smoke was coming through the gaps around the door and I did not appreciate the exposure that my pregnant partner was getting to this. The waitress brought a selection of desserts to show us and I complained about the smoke and she just shrugged at me. This made me angry so I asked to move tables. Obviously it was busy but some tables were available. She never returned. We paid the bill and left. Summary: only go here if it’s empty, and I’m sure the service will be good. The food was delicious, not sure about the hygiene...

Well this wasn't the restaurant we meant to go to, but looked ok, saw some dishes that we thought we would like and sat down, the waiter seemed very helpful. We ordered cod in garlic and grilled scabbard fish and we were told it didn't include any thing with it, (for the price around 17 & 14 Euros each I thought that was a bit expensive) but ordered a chips and tomato and onion salad as well. It arrived and looked ok but the cod was very hard and dry and didn't flake like it should and had very little taste, (it was not good) so we called the waiter over and he agreed and offer an alternative fish, parrot fish and told this was fresh. My wife continued with her scabbard fish but this seemed a bit dry and not so fresh either but we're not experts on this type of fish so let it go but the chips seemed to be dry also and stale and most probably reheated also the tomato salad had no flavour and for an island that has wonderful produce we were very surprised, they were cut into chunks and not sliced and tasted like they came from Holland (no offence to Holland) To finish, the parrot fish was not a star also, I would say not as fresh as we we're lead to believe. My wife is an excellent cook and we have fish regularly at home so have some idea of how fresh fish should taste, our waiter did his best to change my dish and was very courteous, they also took the chips off our bill but unfortunately they need to get a better chef. I would not recommend...

Probably the worst meal of my life. The hole thing started of like a disaster, all of us (7 people) hadn’t even had a chance to sit before a server asked what we would like to drink. They came back half a minute later and asked again, we ended up picking a wine we knew just to get the waiter to back off. The staff was utterly useless and confused, barely spoke any English and didn’t try, but were still in your face at all times for no reason. When the drinks (to sodas and bottles of water) only one of the glasses for the sodas has ice, and no glasses for the water was provided.

The wait for the food was about an hour. When it finally came we hoped that the food at least would be good, but like the rest it was horrible. Everybody’s meat was as dry as the Sahara, completely overcooked and had huge lumps of garlic everywhere, this includes fish, meat and fries basically everything except the boiled vegetables. To top it all off one of us ended up having food poisoning.

The decor in the restaurant was inconsistent, had a horrible acoustics resulting in us having to shout to have a conversation. Overall one of the worst food experience...