Churrasqueira Valdemar — Restaurant in Silves

Review based on the visit to Portugal in Dec 2018* What a find!! We visited the Silves Castle and was looking for a lunch spot. We just accidentally stumbled into this place. I saw a huge smoking BBQ loaded with chicken close to the sidewalk, lots of tables spilling out to the sidewalk from the restaurant and a lot of locals sitting shoulder to shoulder having a meal!! What more can you ask for to know that this can't go wrong!!

We got a table in few minutes and then the food arrived. First it was bread, olives and a mix of carrot and bell pepper drizzled with olive oil.. then in a little while came 2 plates of tomato, onion and lettuce salad with a lovely dressing..

Then came the fries and finally, 2 full plates of mouth watering, piri piri chicken!! Wow !! What a treat.. my son and I finished almost 80% of the chicken as my wife and daughter enjoyed the rest:).. The chicken was very nicely done and dabbed with piri piri sauce which gives a very nice taste. The owner came to me and gave me 2 more sauce bottles with one having 3 chilli spiciness and the other having 5 !! YES I did try the 5 chilli and it WAS spicy even for my standards !! When they saw me try this it really brought a wide smile to their faces !!

The atmosphere was amazing, sitting next to locals and having a Portuguese meal!! We finished all the food and then more food came in the form of fruits and a piece of almond cake.. That is it!! I couldn't eat anything else as I was soooooooo full!!!

Off to the next destination ......

Let me start by saying that both the chicken and the fish were really delicious. However, there are a few things worth mentioning:

We waited literally one hour to get our food.

We ordered chicken with piri-piri and without, but they served everything mixed on one big plate, so we couldn’t tell which was which.

Although we were five people, we got the same portion of fries as the table with only two people.

The chicken pieces were very small, understandable given the cheap prices, but still worth noting. The chicken plate you see in the picture is actually one and a half portions.

The fish shown in the picture is one portion. Very small.

The menu said the meal included dessert, but the waiter told us they had stopped serving it. Not a big deal, just thought I’d mention it, maybe it’s better to remove it from the menu to avoid confusion.

Despite all this, when it came time to pay, we were charged for three chicken portions instead of one and a half, even though we had questioned the size earlier when it arrived. The waiter insisted we ordered three.

Overall, don’t be fooled by the low prices — the portions are quite small. Still, the food itself was really tasty. Next time, we’ll just make sure to order two...

RESTAURANT SCAM ALERT!!!

Waitress didn’t give us the menu. We were 4 people (1 child) and got one plate of cut up chicken (3 drumsticks, one breast and one thigh and 3 wings), a plate of non spicy half chicken. 1 plate of fries and two salad plates - starters (olives bread and cheese). At the end the waitress gave us a plate of oranges.

So here’s the deal.

We ask her for the bill and she comes back and says 44 Euro. SAY WHAT???!!!

So I went up to the counter and asked for the bill. When the waitress saw me she started speaking in Portuguese to her colleague at the till and was acting very guilty. I asked to see the menu and saw that with our order we wouldn’t have even reached that bill.

To make matters worse the person paying next to us at the till was paying 10 Euro for 2 chickens.

At the end the total receipt bill she printer was 45 euro for things we didn’t even have!! Terrible experience indeed. Manager didn’t do anything either about this as they all tried to cover for the waitress.

Lesson here do not trust the staff there as they try to take advantage of the tourists - and most of these reviews are quite possibly questionable because that...