Olhos n'Água — Restaurant in Vila do Bispo

Lovely wedding anniversary lunch yesterday at Olhos n'Água in Salema, only spoilt by one of the waiters who 2 days earlier took our table booking in person. We asked for our favourite table in the corner and was told he would keep it for us unless a big group turned up and they needed to use that corner, he even wrote ‘table 23’ in the diary. We turned up only to find some other couple already seated there with the rest of the restaurant empty! Anyway, the other waiters on the day which much better and he largely kept his distance whilst looking a little sheepish. The couvert was fab with local bread and olives together with a fresh tuna mayo and garlic marinated carrots. We had the tempura prawns and fried baby squid starters followed by a perfectly cooked sirloin steak and a plump Dover sole. All finished with apple pie and affogato. The chefs here really are very good, the owner/manager really cares, and most of the waiting staff are as good as anywhere I’ve been recently. This would have been a 5-star review if it hadn’t been for the table...

Worst food I have had in a long time. We were a party of 5. Service was above average for Salema and the restaurant looked nice. The food was appalling. I had "Vegetable soup" to start. Chef doesn't season food or use stock to make his soup. The rest of the party had garlic bread, and chicken wingsI was jealous of the garlic bread. It was good. The chicken wings were served with a bottled bbq sauce on the side, it was not good. For mains I had duck breast with a honey and orange sauce the duck was way over cooked and the sauce tasted like bovril. My wife had linguine with a tomato and oregano sauce it was vile. The linguine was over cooked and almost mush the sauce tasted of neither tomato or oregano. One kid had French fries which were ok, another had "chicken steak" which was a wafer thin piece of breaded chicken that was way way overdone the last kid had chicken Caesar salad chicken over cooked and again bottled sauce. I wouldn't recommend this place to my...

We made a reservation as is proper, and arrived timely for a nice dinner. The pulvo (octopus) appetizer was good, but the fish I ordered was quite small. I was told that the larger fish in the case were for 2 persons, but they were 4x in size. Okay, get over that. Service was stiff. I felt like I was being served by a curt banker. Then when it came time to settle the bill, I determined to split a 20 Euro note for an appropriate round up tip. One next to the attendant joked he was the banker. I asked for a 10 and 5 notes plus a couple of 2 nad a single Euro coin. He liad out the change then extracted the 5 note from my grasp. I have never experienced some grubiness. I will not return to this...