Boteco do Manolo — Restaurant in Dr. Phillips

I ate with a few Brazilian friends, which was also their first time. The first caipirinha I had was strawberry. When it was brought out, it looked like the drink was flavored with strawberry daiquiri mix. Upon stirring the beverage, I was right and it tasted like I was drinking strawberry puree. I had my friend try it and they were very disappointed in the beverage. This was my first caipirinha but I knew it wasn't supposed to taste like that. Luckily, my friend asked for a new beverage to be made and I went for the traditional lime flavor, which was a much better experience. The party of four shared 4 appetizers (empanadas, bolinho de feijoada, bolinho de bacalhau and linguica calabresa acebolada) 3 caipirinhas and 2 desserts (brigaderio and pudim de leite condensado). Our bill came out to $175. Over $40 a person and only two people had gotten drinks. Little did we know that we were also charged $20 for the live music! Our serve never told us about this charge. We sat down to dinner at 6:30 and left around 7:45pm. The live music started at 7:30pm. We listened to roughly 4 songs before we left the restaurant. The reason for the 3 star rating is the charge for live music. We were already seated and even served our food prior to the music even starting. And we were never even told about the live music charge in the first place. Felt like we...

The food is really good, the place is clean, excellent presentation, delicious food, and drinks. The problem I found is the language. Some servers don’t speak English either Spanish. They think they speak fluent Spanish but no. We wanted to ask questions about the food but they don't understand English nor Spanish. I’ve have been there three times and the waitresses always talk only to the men in the table, also one time a waitress touched my husband’s hand when she gave the check and said the “tip is not included”. I was the person who was going to pay. She ignored me all the time. of course, I gave 18% gratuity because I am a waitress and my friends too, we work in restaurants. I honestly think they need courses in customer service, we (women) never talk only to the men in the table, NEVER touch the men in the table.

So, the restaurant is sooo good. They only need to clarify the servers to talk in English if they notice the customers are not Brazilians, and train the waitresses to do NOT make contact only with men in table. All need attention. I don’t know in Brazil but in this country, women pay, talk and...

The chicken parmigiana was good and well served (lots of food, more than enough for 2 people). The sides were just ok. The caipirinha was awful, you'll be better off ordering a lime juice (limonada). The brazilian empanadas (pastéis) had good filling but the dough wasn't great. Definitely skip the quindim, you could taste the eggs in one of them. The meal was definitely not worth the price we paid at the end.

Decor/atmosphere was just ok. There was live music, which I usually dislike, but it was not too loud, so we were still able to have conversations, and the bossa nova kind of music was not a nuisance. So glad it was not country music. However they did charge us extra for the live music. I know it's common in Brazil to charge extra for live music, but living here for so long I never had to pay extra for live music, so we were surprised to get billed for it at the end. You'd think having paid $60+ per person for a meal would be enough to pay for the musicians' work.

There are much better places to spend $60/person in Orlando, so we...