Caravela Portuguese Restaurant — Restaurant in London

It is awful to leave a one star review but this time I cannot do otherwise. I came by to this restaurant as a walk-in guest, it was pretty empty and I was happy to have a table outside. Waited 15 minutes for the order to be taken, asked informations in regards the beers offering and the waiter have no clue, we have been offered bread from the waiter and at the end got charge for 2 portion of bread, the basket had 4 small slices; when I asked why we had been charged for the bread and especially why for two portions a very angry waitress replied that it was on the menu, well I didn’t know and probably the waiter should have specified that you have to pay for instead of offering the bread in such a misleading way. We felt mistreated and cheated so we asked to have the service charge removed, very angrily she took away the bill and reappeared after another 10 minutes with a bill that was having a 2£ misc. charge; I asked what was that about and been replied that it was for the packaging for the take away items we had, very well I asked why that 2£ weren’t on the previous bill and asked for that charge to be removed, she went back inside and after a minute a chef came towards my table with a menacing manner saying that “the cost of the packaging was cover by the service charge and you have to pay 2£ if the service charge is removed” I kindly explained that in UK by law the service charge are money for the staff and not to pay fir restaurants cost and anyway he could very well keep his packaging and remove the absurd extra cost.

It has been a very bad experience I wouldn’t recommend this place to my...

Food 3/5 Service 0/5

I told the waiter that the mussels were not fresh in the seafood rice dish. Instantly, he started explaining that everything they buy is fresh and that next time I should probably just order the dish without mussels if I think they’re not fresh.

What sort of defensive, childish attitude is that?😂 He got even more defensive when he learnt that I was Spanish cause now he couldn’t say much 😂

I didn’t argue with him, so I simply asked to take the service charge away.

Manager came out, told me she heard that we didn’t like the dish, to which I corrected her that I didn’t say that. I only told them the mussels were not fresh. I received the same defensive (less this time) narrative; she buys the seafood herself.

Which doesn’t really matter and is not the point. Point is, they weren’t fresh and that was it. I wasn’t accusing her of purchasing frozen mussels, just a bad batch.

A very defensive bunch and the emotional intelligence of a wet plastic bag. 😂 (the African waitress was very lovely though)

Replying to the restaurant’s comment below: If your staff had looked clearly, I had tried all the mussels to check if there were any good ones. All the mussels were spat out and were left on the plate.

There wasn’t an instance where I ever said the food wasn’t good, simply the mussels were off/not fresh. Speak to your supplier if you will.

Please take the time to read and listen to your customers before...

Second time here. The first time it was a Friday and an almost empty restaurant. The service was slow despite this. The food when it came was edible but not hot, particularly a problem when you are expecting hot crispy tempura vegetables and get warm not so crispy ones. Today’s service was extremely slow. We were sitting outside and had to keep trying to attract the staff’s attention to place an order. I had suckling pig. I chose this because I had had this in Portugal before and enjoyed it. The portion was small for £26 and had 3 rib bones that had hardly any meat on them. Bits of the pig were a little pink. My friend had chicken and fries. The chicken was nice but the fries, although the right colour were so floppy you could have quite literally tied one into a knot. I had crepes to finish and they were very nice. In summary the staff really need to do more to service their outside area, sticking their heads out the door regularly to check on their diners needs. I’m not sure I’ll be...