Zeca da Bica — Restaurant in Tavira

Avoid if you don’t want to spend ages waiting for food with extremely poor customer service.

We were a party of 2 and were seated straight away. Ordered food and drinks before 3 other tables (all parties of 2) sat down around us.

Waited 30 minutes just to get bread and butter. Then proceeded to wait for over an hour for our main food, whilst watching the 3 tables make their orders and receive their food, 1 table even finishing by this point. When we finally managed to speak with a waiter about our order, they went to check and didn’t even come back straight away to let us know the status. We were left hanging to feel angrier and angrier about the situation.

The waiter who took our order then came over and made a poor excuse about the kitchen being busy. I pointed out that all the other parties who came after us had received theirs so it wasn’t about being busy. They clearly forgot about our order. To hear them trying to cover this up was infuriating. To top it off, when we asked how long it would now take to get our food, all they could answer was ‘soon’.

When the food finally came, we ate and asked for the bill. Again, this was taking a while to come so we got up to pay inside the restaurant. We didn’t want to leave a tip but the waiter just took the money and disappeared without saying a word. We didn’t even want to wait to get our change back, god knows when they’d come back with it!

Terrible experience! I wouldn’t...

I ordered the Cataplana, and it was quite delicious. My only issue is the tourist pricing — €55 for 2 people. They were accommodating enough to prepare a serving for 1 person. Note that the serving came out in a cooking vessel exactly sized for one person, so this option is definitely available and doesn’t seem to entail extra work.

Half of €55 is €27.50, but I was not charged this nor a small surcharge for a single portion. Instead, I was charged €35, which feels like a significant surcharge, especially since the portion only included 3 shrimps, a couple of pieces of bacalhau, and clams.

As for the service, the waiters are friendly. They have both indoor and outdoor seating in a narrow alleyway, so expect people walking by frequently. There was also a disturbing incident where a mentally unstable man threatened to use a knife and actually grabbed one off a table, which was a little scary. For that reason, I would recommend...

Zeca da Bica was not our first choice, we found it because we walked in front of it and this restaurant caught our attention thanks to the “routard guide” sign attached on the door. Trusting these certificates, we therefore decided to enter and try. Unfortunately I was a little disappointed: first for the waiting, both for ordering and then for the food; then the food itself, I ordered an octopus salad (in the photo) that was 80% onion and other vegetables, and only the 20% was made of octopus. We also took a tuna steak that was overcooked, this mistake makes the tuna very dry. I’d like to mention the grilled sardines, they were good. In my opinion, the ratio quality/price is quite low for the Portuguese average. I don’t know if I would recommend...