Cafe Central A Mina - Penela

O restaurante está sob nova gestão. Um marido e uma esposa da Bielorrússia. Quando chegámos havia uma mesa de 6 pessoas que tinham acabado de comer e estavam a tomar café. Não havia mais ninguém no café. Estávamos com fome e encomendámos 3 omeletes e 3 cafés. Os cafés chegaram quase 10 minutos mais tarde, e estavam frios. Nem sequer um pouco quentes. Frios. As omeletas demoraram 30 minutos a chegar! Como era segunda-feira e a maioria dos lugares estavam fechados, decidimos esperar porque não sabíamos se havia mais nenhum lugar aberto. As omeletes acabaram por chegar e ficámos muito desapontados. Cada omeleta foi feita com apenas um ovo e dobrada em três como um crepe. Era minúscula e fria. Comemo-la com uma dentada, literalmente. Pedimos mais 2 porque o meu marido ainda estava com fome (obviamente). Após 25 minutos, presumimos que se tinham esquecido de nós, por isso fui pagar. O meu marido e a minha mãe entraram no carro à porta do café. Enquanto esperava para pagar, vi o homem a fazer algo por cima do fogão. Era a nossa omelete esquecida . Ele tinha feito uma omelete maior e pediu-me que esperasse enquanto adicionava as azeitonas por cima. Abriu então o frasco e colocou a sua mão suja para pegar nas azeitonas e colocá-las em cima. Isto já é suficientemente mau, mas durante os tempos de Covid! É uma vergonha. Quando o meu marido comeu, a omelete foi queimada de preto no fundo. Ele não a comeu. Nós queixámo-nos educadamente e eles apenas se riram de nós. Não pediram desculpa, ofereceram um reembolso e preocuparam-se com a sua comida. Cobraram-nos o preço total por tudo. Nunca mais lá iremos. The restaurant is under new management. A husband and wife from Belarus. When we arrived there was a table of 6 people who had finished eating and were having coffee. There was no-one else in the cafe. We were hungry so we ordered 3 omelettes and 3 coffees. The coffees arrived almost 10 minutes later, and they were cold. Not even a little warm. Cold. The omelettes took 30 minutes to arrive! Because it was monday and most places were closed we decided to wait because we didn 't know if anywhere else was open. The omelettes arrived eventually and we were very disappointed. Each omelette was made with only one egg and folded in three like a crepe. It was tiny and cold. We ate it with one bite literally. We ordered another different omelette because my husband was still hungry (obviously). After 25 minutes we assumed they had forgotten us so I went to pay. My husband and my Mum got in the car outside the cafe. As I was waiting to pay I saw the man fiddling with something over the counter. It was our forgotten omelette. He had made a bigger omelette and he asked me to wait while he added the olives on top. He then opened the jar and put his dirty hand in to take the olives and put them on top. This is bad enough in itself, but during Covid times! Disgraceful. The omelette had broken apart when he cooked it so he had rearranged the pieces badly on the plate. When my husband cut into the omelette is was burnt black on the bottom. He didn 't eat it. We politely complained. They didn 't care. Their excuse for the long wait was that they were busy. Their only customers left 5 minutes after we arrived. They washed up all the dishes before they started preparing our food! We told them it was the worst food we had ever had in Portugal They didn 't apologise, offer a refund or care about their food. They just smiled and laughed at us. They charged us the full price for everything. We paid because we lived in that village at the time but we will never go there again. Utterly disgraceful. Worst coffee, worst food,and the most appalling customer service. What kind of managers laugh at their customers!!

We had some time to kill on our way to Coimbra and stopped off in Penela for lunch and a look at the castle. We had s delightful light lunch of delicious soup,tasty ham and cheese toasted sandwiches, generous glass of wine, dessert and coffee for €5. Great food for a bargain price. Highly recommended.