Food, food and Carnaval Masks

Back to my time with Marie as my visitor.  Oh, and thank you everyone for your thoughts on burgers and toppings.  Lots of good ideas for things to make in the future.

The day of my big oopsie we obviously did not do much.  So much for doing something for Valentine's day and Marie's birthday.  Oh well!  At least we started the day out right with some honey and pumpkin bread from the organic market and some of the local cheese from the local cheese factory.

Look at all those nice pumpkin seeds.

After staying in all Sunday, Ryan took care of my car Monday and I took Marie (by cab, hehe) to Angra.  I should point out how silly cabs can be here.  I have my cab drivers cell phone number (ok, he is now my cab driver because he is seriously the cab driver for everyone on the base) stored in my phone.  When I called the first time when my car broke down, it was actually the guy's father (yes, it was Valentine's day so the actual cabbie took his wife out!) and he was there within 5 minutes.  When we went to Angra, he called a mechanic to ask for some advice on my car.  The cabs are all Mercedes with nice leather seats, it was like hiring a personal town car and driver, like we do sometimes in the States to go to the airport.  Oh, and when he dropped us in Angra, he told us he can come pick us up when we are done, just call him 15 minutes before we are ready.  That is some good taxi service if I've ever seen it.  The thing is that he is slightly more expensive than grabbing a guy from the taxi lane in the two main cities.  But I learned, you are paying for someone who speaks good English.  We did go with the taxi line in Angra, but it helped that Marie speaks Portuguese.  He was about 4 euro cheaper and I think I could have handled it myself with limited Portuguese.  At least my first taxi experience was a good one.

So there we were in Angra.  It was pouring rain and all my umbrellas and rain jackets were, yep you guessed it, in my car which was at the shop.  So we settled for getting wet and dealing with it.  We wanted to check out the bronze sculptures in the Angra Museum, but they were closed.  They did however have a display room open in the front that contained some neat Carnaval masks?

After that we did some shopping and wandering around before deciding to stop for lunch.  We stopped at Sandoxe because I like the veggie burger there.  They serve it with an egg.

Marie had a tosta mista, AKA hot ham and cheese.  This is super popular here as standard bar and cafe fare.

Then it was home and back out for more food.  This was Marie's last night so we wanted to do something special.  Boy were we in for a surprise!

We selected O Pescador because they have this fantastic bruschetta...wrong...new chef...lots of changes...not really any good changes either.  So, no more bruschetta and no more nice cheese with the bread.  Instead just butter and spreadable cheese, which is good, but not as good as the fresh cheese.

bread...

Wine, of course.  This is from another Azorean island.

Marie actually had a good dish.  This was swordfish with a tropical fruit sauce, I think it was actually passion fruit sauce.

Ryan had a tuna steak, but it actually looked more like steak than tuna.  It was dark brown, almost black inside.  They tried to say it was supposed to look like that, but we didn't buy it.

Mine was good too, and I have had this before, so I knew what to expect.  This is parrotfish, AKA veja, over a saucy potato dish with shrimp.  This fish has a unique flavor and is usually very good, but here it seems to always taste salty.  I still enjoyed it.

We decided to do desserts even though we were skeptical and a little disappointed.  Marie had a cheesecake with passion fruit.

Ryan had a big bowl of various ice creams.

And I had the brownie sundae.  It had a coffee flavor to it and walnuts, and was sorta dry, but I managed to eat some of it.

Well, certainly not the best meal and I am sure it could have been worse.  We probably won't be going back there for a while.  Overall, we had great meals and a great time while Marie was here.  The only pics I have left from her stay are from the breakfast we enjoyed before she went to the airport.  I hope to get those up tomorrow.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever gone to a restaurant you really liked and ended up disappointed in your meal?