Menu - Monverde

A nice and sunny December Saturday. It looked like it would be a great day to go there, enjoy the view and have a family lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, for wh... read more A nice and sunny December Saturday. It looked like it would be a great day to go there, enjoy the view and have a family lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, for which we had big expectations. Declaration of interest: neither of us who had this meal had or have any relationship with this hotel and management nor with similar places. As a starter, wife and daughter had each a oven-grilled Portobello mushroom stuffed with a delicious filling that probably had its chopped stem, béchamel and some cheese. I had some half a dozen aprox. 8mm thick slices of braised tuna which were presented with a dark sauce, probably a red wine reduction, and a nice soft mashed purple cabbage that tasted nicely. Tuna’s quality and taste was very good. For the mains, baby grandson had a grilled sea bass loin with mashed potatoes. The kid ate everything and told us he liked. For the three adults, we opted each for the same mains. A so-called veal medallion over a bed of sautéed potatoes mashed with some vegetables, a reduction of red wine and Port wine. I asked for mine rare, wife medium and daughter well done. The “medallions” were thin, not sirloin but common steak beef. To be honest, if the menu would call this a “steak” they wouldn’t even have a normal thickness steak. Mains not to be repeated. And most probably, even the restaurant not to be repeated. The service was a bit arrogant, and that started in the moment I informed about my lactose intolerance. Was informed that they’ll tell the kitchen so that nothing would be served to me that could contain milk or derivatives. The problem for me was that there were no alternatives offered. For the appetisers, only could resort to olives. There was a nice tuna paste, two flavours remoulded butter, the olives, and at least two types of sliced bread. 20€ just for this. When the staff served me the mains, the wine reduction was absent, with the excuse that it contained milk. When asked that I wouldn’t mind if the wine reduction for me could be done without milk, immediate answer was that wouldn’t not be possible, the wine reduced sauce was already prepared. Containing my astonishment, still asked if the kitchen wouldn’t have the time to prepare a wine and Port reduction for me. The answer extracted was that they will ask what the kitchen could do. In fact what they’ve done was to my dismay a “juices left in the pan that cooked the meat”: a tasteless oily liquid. For the pudding, wife and daughter had the “caramel sublime”, a small baked cake with melted caramel inside. Good feedback. I had a Portuguese classic that bears the name of the convent of a priest that firstly created it. “Priscos”. Flavour and consistency as expected. Final bill: around €160. Minus: Unkind and probably uneducated service, contrary to many other options in the country that nowadays have hospitality educated and graduated staff. Common food, named and described with some pretentious aspirations that then fail on the ingredients selection and mostly on execution. Positives: location, interior spaces and modern architecture, and a nice view of the vineyards that belong to the “Quinta”.

We stayed at the hotel for 4 nights and decided to dine at the restaurant on the first night, hoping we would come back for another night during the stay. Well,... read more We stayed at the hotel for 4 nights and decided to dine at the restaurant on the first night, hoping we would come back for another night during the stay. Well, it was the worst dining experience of our 2-week trip to Portugal! Food: below average, one dish came out without any real flavor, the other had vegetables that were way too salty. Service: abysmal! Many staff were walking around without doing anything. Two of them stopped and chatted with guests at a table for over 30 minutes (maybe family or friends dining there? . We asked for the dessert menu 20 minutes after they cleared the dishes, just to be told that a colleague will bring it . How hard was it to bring the dessert menu? Another 10 minutes went by before the dessert menu made it to our table. We had to ask to put in the order because we were waiting and nobody stopped by, to be told again that I will get my boss by another staff. And during the whole time staff were just circulating/cruising around trying to avoid to look at guests to see whether they needed help. They truly need some professional training! Wine: good, which brought this review from Terrible to Poor! Needless to say, we drove to Amarante for dinner the other nights of our stay. Curiously, service for breakfast was covered by 2-3 staff and was decent.