Restaurant Review: Venezuela, Praia Verde
It is rare in Portugal to find any restaurant that is actually bad. Eating within 100 yards of the beach certainly increases your odds, but there is still a good chance that what you end up with will be perfectly satisfactory, or, in many cases very good.
We have had some of the tastiest plates of prawns and clams at very random beach cafes and often been really impressed. I suppose it was about time, in the peak of the summer season,
Restaurant Venezuela - Poor
we ended up somewhere truly crap.
Restaurant Venezuela was it. If awards could be given for terrible service this place would definitely be in the running. Our experience was so laughably bad that I have decided to do this review in list format so as to remember everything!
Arrived at restaurant and, despite plenty of eye contact were ignored by giggly waiters for at least 15 minutes.
1. Waiter arrived to take drinks order.
2. After bringing drinks, waiter returns to ask what we want to eat. We suggest that to help us choose he brings us a menu. He brings one menu to share between five.
3. After another delay, different waiter comes to take order, after ordering one meal he wanders off, we call him back to explain that one meal between five is likely to be insufficient. He reluctantly takes order for all of us, which includes a half bottle of wine.
4. Different waiter appears with a tray of drinks which resembles the original drinks order that we have already been given and is sent away. The wine we ordered doesn’t appear.
5. Two of our meals appear, both with cold chips. We notice no one has cutlery.
6. We request cutlery – this takes over ten minutes to appear, by which time cold meals are even colder. Wine has still not appeared and is re-requested.
7. While two of our party struggle though their cold lunches a third plate appears, followed a few minutes later by a forth. Still no wine, which is re-requested each time we see a waiter (by this time we are on our third.)
8. Waiter appears to tell us that the wine we have been waiting for is not available. We order an alternative.
9. My food arrives, by which time everyone else has finished eating. STILL NO WINE.
10. Help myself to oil, vinegar and salt from another table.
11. After one more unsuccessful attempt at ordering the wine from yet another different waiter, we give up and request our bill. Sure enough, right near the top of the bill is the wine we still haven’t had.
12. At this point we complain, a lot, but the only concession made is that the waiter crosses the wine off the bill. We pay reluctantly, leaving no tip and vowing never to return.
A final word on this place. If you somehow end up in a situation where you HAVE to eat here, have pizza – it was hot and tasty and arrived relatively quickly, but, better still, try NOT to end up in a situation where you have to eat here.
Similar Posts:
Posted in Restaurants | 
Tags: algarve restaurant reviews, praia verde, restaurant review, restaurant venezuela
Hi There,
comone, who would ever remeber to go to a place called
“Pastelaria Padaria Venezuela”
This smells to a place that is completely closed during the year (or just producing bread which seems is the only thing they can do, that why the pizza was ok) and just opens as a restaurant over the summer to get some more cash from tourists that don’t know them….
That was a mistake, that I though you would never commited by now.
I am terrible disapointed with your performance…LOL (i am joking, is just the learning process, with time you will learn to distinguish the good ones just by looking at them)
regards
I agree! That sign “Restaurante” on top of the “Pastelaria Padaria Venezuela” does suggest a seasonable tourist trap… I bet that if you had asked for the “Livro de Reclamações” they would fall all over themselves because they might not even have a license as restaurant
CcoR is right of course but distinguishing isn’t that easy; probably knowing your area is more important…however, in the enormity of Algarve Touristland, even that is difficult.
THe number of bad restaurants in Portugal is legion simply because, with a very limited ‘national’ menu, everybody who thinks he or his wife can cook has no qualms opening a noshery….as I’ve said many times on ‘Expats Portugal’ the quality of the raw material is without peer; it’s what happens to it in the kitchen.
I don’t know the Algarve very well but I do know that it is divided up into ‘Schickimickilands’ & ‘Prolesvilles’ and that your discovering a really good restaurant in the latter is sheer good luck.
Schickimickiland is another kettle of fish entirely because the expat community has D.O.S.H. The limited menu may be simple but you can not only rely on superlative raw material…as in other areas…but the cooking & presentation will be 99% perfect…but at a price.
I was staying with friends in the Carvoeiro area a couple of years ago & we NEVER hit a bad eatery, even on the beach. When I invited them for dinner we went to a simple seafood restaurant, nothing special. The three of us all had the same, I remember: a small plate of mixed shellfish for starters, grilled sea bass with a few spuds, a green salad plus one bottle of Ponte de Lima Vinho Verde, no ‘afters’, but espresso & brandy….It was, of course, excellent…………but nearly FIVE times more expensive than the same meal I often take at one of my local eateries in the Minho.
London isn’t England…Bavaria isn’t Germany And Portugal isn’t the Algarve…and therein lies many of the problems of reviewing restaurants.
Cock up in the last para of preceding comment…THE ALGARVE ISN’T PORTUGAL…but if you read it rightly, it’s the same thing
)
Dogoyaro, Isabel,
Oh well, we will have to be more careful next time….it was our first and only major disappointment so far
Best wishes
B