Food & Drink

Saturday 10th June 2023. So I take a 10 euro note out of the newspaper’s petty cash and try my luck in Monchique, and why not? I’ve heard about the opening of a new restaurant going by the name of Grumpy Mamas. This is where I’ll try and see whether ten euros will buy me a healthy lunch including pud. Will I succeed? The small restaurant is open Wednesday to Friday, between 10am and 3pm. The mamas, you see, have kids … On the way to Rua Engenheiro Duarte Pacheco, the bottleneck of Monchique, I am struck by the mirror …

Saturday May 6th, 2023. Let’s grab a bite to eat? It’s Friday, 2pm, and we’re on our way to Monchique to sample a Pizza Margherita in the recently re-opened Miradouro restaurant just above Caldas de Monchique. Very early on in my life, the Italian head chef Carlo Padulo, who taught me how to make pizza a long time ago advised me to always start with a Pizza Margherita. Tomato sauce and cheese are unlikely to upset your stomach. Today’s dough however is very odd and hardly cooked. The same thing happens with a second pizza by the name of „Quatro …

Saturday the 29th of April 2023. Standing outside the entrance to Restaurant Camilo high above Lagos Bay, we are waiting to be admitted inside by the doorman. If he knew our identities he might not lift the ribbon for us. What he says then is a bit odd: only if we have come to eat and drink will he give us one of the few available inside tables. To be clear: we are not standing at the entrance to a nightclub. And it’s midday, not midnight. Should we however only want to order a drink, we can grab one of the …

Saturday 22nd April 2023. What can the customer visiting a restaurant expect? Food and service that are at least as good if not better in fact than what you’d find at home when one of you is staffing the stove. Or is that maybe asking too much? What we definitely don’t want is to go home with an upset tummy. In our capacity as test eaters we take our seat anonymously in Mosaiko, a Moroccan restaurant in Silves (Rua Elias Garcia, 17). It’s a Saturday evening, shortly before 8pm. There are two of us, and studying the menu already has …

Saturday the 15th of April 2023. The oceans are overfished. And in places where fish is rare it becomes expensive. Which is why an increasing number of restaurants are turning towards farmed fish. This then leads to a kilo of freshly caught summer sardine from the sea already costing as much as farmed sea bass. And it’s always about sheer mass. The approach of summer brings the approach of the tourists. A region which in normal times counts not even half a million residents is artificially inflated to form a community of sun worshippers taking in huge numbers of residents …