Overall I thought that the food in Funchal Madeira was really quite good. We had several really good meals there and ended up walking away with a very positive culinary view of the island. Unfortunately though, sometimes the bad comes with the good and we did have one negative experience on one night of our stay there. It may have even tainted our overall viewpoint of the food on the island had the meal not been followed by one of our best dining experiences in all of Europe up until that point. In this article I offer a review of our negative food experience at the Restaurante do Forte. I hope you enjoy.
In brief, my overarching review of the restaurant would be simply:
But for fun, let me explain my reasoning.
As its name suggests, Restaurante do Forte, is located within the walls of the old city fort - S茫o Tiago.
It's has a picturesque setting next to the water, with views of the sea from cutouts in the bright yellow walls of the old fort.
Crisp white table cloths, fancy looking table settings and a backdrop of blue water glistening in the early evening sunlight; what more could you ask for in terms of ambiance really?
We arrived to dinner around 7pm while the restaurant was still nearly empty and ordered an aperitif while we perused the menu.
It was quute hot out that day and I wasn't all that hungry, so I figured I'd order 脿 la carte this night, but then the waiter ended up talking me into doing the set menu. He explained that each dish would be accompanied by a specially selected wine that was specifically paired to go with the plate and really sold it for me.
I had wanted to try Madeira wine on this trip anyway so the price actually worked out significantly better. I basically got 3 glasses of wine and an appetizer for the same price that I would have paid for the main course that I wanted and dessert and the fortified wine. It seemed that it would actually have been silly not to do the set menu.
Things sort of went downhill quickly after we ordered though.
An amuse bouche was served, which was a bite of mushrooms prepared in some unknown way. It was nice pop of umami flavor to awaken the palate.
At this time the restaurant was still pretty empty and we overheard a man complaining to the head waiter. It seemed that he had paid for some special service (champagne and chocolate covered strawberries) that was supposed to be delivered to his hotel room but which never actually arrived. He was rightfully upset about it stating that it was too late for them to send it now since their dinner reservation was in the next few minutes. I noticed that some of the reserved tables were decorated with rose petals and fancier settings so I'm guessing that the restaurant was selling some sort of romantic dinner package that started in guests ajoining hotel rooms.
The appetizer was served and though it looked quite fancy, I actually found it to be incredibly bland. It had almost no taste whatsoever. The wine that the dish was supposed to be served with never came either and I had completely finished the dish by the time I could ask our waiter if it was still coming. They brought it but the specially paired wine really just seemed to be a generic bottle that everyone was being served throughout the restaurant.
My wife ordered a butternut squash soup and asked that they not put in the blackpudding that it was to come with. The waiter was fine with the request stating that it wasn't a problem but then they served the soup with the black pudding anyway. It wasn't a big issue for my wife so we didn't say anything but the issues really seemed to be piling up and they only got worse from there.
My main course was Beef Wellington and it was actually quite good despite it taking forever to arrive. We probably waited 35-45 minutes after we had finished our appetizers. At this point the wait staff were clearly acting frazzled. They tried to make up for the long wait times by plying the customers with wine. I wasn't in a big drinking mood that night and my meal would come with four drinks as is, so I told the waiter that I'd just stick to the wine that was being served with my main. From there I had to say no to wine at least four times, which really started to get annoying. By the end I just put my hand over my glass anytime the guy approached our table and he would moved on. My wife accepted a top up and I noticed that it was a generic red that was completely different than the original one that she ordered with her meal, that had cost slightly more money. I could understand the move if her glass had already been empty, but since it was still a quarter full I'd say that mixing two wines together is a pretty stange thing for a restaurant to do.
My wife ordered gnocchi for her main and it didn't look appealing at all. I tasted it and it was super gummy - not a good dish at all by any means.
Dessert came after another long wait. We had wanted to leave long before that point but we're essentially trapped to our pre-ordered meal. Again, the desserts looked better than they tasted. Both were quite bland.
The Madeira wine ended up being quite good and I'm glad that I did get to try it on the trip. At this point though we asked for the bill, right away when we finished dessert, but then I had to ask him again after we waited for about 15 minutes or so. I think he came by another 10 minutes after the second request. Waiting around sort of summed up the night for us.
Overall the staff remained friendly and polite for the duration of the meal and the waiter did explain that they were having issues that night because they were serving a new menu. But the meal took around 3 hours to complete and the wait times between dishes were pretty unbearable for us. When you couple that with the mediocre bland food, minor dinning mistakes and random wine related oddities, it just made for a really bad dining experience overall. I personally would not recommend the restaurant to anyone and would certainly never go back there myself.
For all of those reasons I'd give the place 2 stars out of 5, one for the setting and one to be generous to the staff for attempting to get their patrons drunk. In fact, maybe if I drank more I would have been tanked and might have really enjoyed the meal. Who's to say?
