restaurants - Cabanas

(Re) Review – O Pedro, Cabanas de Tavira

O Pedro Cabanas

It’s been a long time since we previously produced a review of O Pedro in Cabanas. I looked back at the old review and found that the Cabanas boardwalk hadn’t even been completed at the time, so we must be talking about three years or more.

We hadn’t visited since. Looking back at the review I’m not really sure why, as we’d been largely impressed with the meal, barring some disappointing squid.

We visited on a Saturday night in the middle of August, and the little town of Cabanas was absolute bedlam. There were queues at all of the restaurants and our requests for a table for two plus a baby were met with attitudes from amusement to arrogance, leaving us wondering why, as knowledgeable locals, we had been so naïve as to even bother trying to eat out in August.

We were on our way back to the car, defeated, when we spotted the vacant table outside O Pedro, and confess we may have pulled the “but we live here” card in order to secure it.

Anyway, table secured, everything flowed like clockwork. Bread and olives appeared, drinks orders were taken, and the service was so swift we actually had to request an extra couple of minutes to decide.

The food was great – in fact far more “stand out” than we remembered from our previous visit. I had a prawn and pork kebab that was succulent and tasty, with the slices of pepper and onion having soaked up all the delicious juices. My wife had a “house steak” – not the finest cut in the world, but cooked just as requested, surrounded with potatoes and sauce, and topped with a fried egg.

Desserts were very good indeed, with the chocolate mousse being particularly notable.

The best surprise of all came when the bill arrived – less than €40, including coffees, a large beer, water, and a couple of glasses of wine. We were particularly impressed with the low price of the “add-ons” – coffees for 70 cents and just €2.20 for the huge beer. Restaurants have a real opportunity to “nickel and dime” the tourists on these things, and these fair prices show real integrity.

O Pedro did much to win our loyalty that night. The food was sufficiently good to make us want to work our way through the menu, the pricing was outstanding, and most of all the staff actually worked to accommodate us on such a busy night. We will be back.