Marius Restaurant or a Pirate’s Den?

Guest blogger- Jane

When I was looking for somewhere a little different to eat for our last night I found restaurant “Marius Degustare”, which was on Avenida Atlantico at the far end where we had walked that day and it was rated 5 stars and 16,969 reviews can’t be wrong.

I knew from the elaborate entrance of bright blue lit palm trees and camp gold covered figurines at the entrance, that I had made the right choice! Inside was a “Pirates Cave” full of quirky lights, lots more figurines, the walls were covered with plates or painted in gold and covered in mirrors. And guess what?…. there were pirates everywhere (they were the waiters) and I should add at this point they were not the jolly sort but were quite surly, some may say grumpy and we thought highly amusing.

We were shown to our table and they explained what happens next. They asked us our nationality and then planted a flag with your country on your table.

Julie did not recognise the flag of the couple sitting nearest to us but could not ask the nice lady where they were from as the whole night she had her iPhone in front of her face taking photos for Instagram. Instead, Julie asked the burly chap who said in a rather gruff manner “Brazil Regional”. We thought he might be auditioning to be a pirate!

This was an all you can eat steak and seafood restaurant where the not so jolly pirates, each came round with trays of meat/fish that had just been prepared or in the case of the steaks were still on a hot stone so you could have it the way you liked it. You did not get the whole steak you got small pieces of meat and then more meat and then more and so on.

These are some of the ones that we were offered that I remember:

Tenderloin, Tomahawk, T-Bone, Porterhouse, Fillet, Ribeye and Sirloin.

The fish platters had these that I remember:

Lobster Tails, Oysters, Squid, Octopus; King Prawns, Sea Bass.

Woe betide you if you were vegetarian, as your list was limited to a grilled mushroom.

This wasn’t everything, oh no, they had an all you can eat and loosely titled salad bar too, on which we found:

Giant mussels, oxtail stew, seafood paella, plus lattice crisps, smoked salmon and asparagus (for the vegetarians) and so much more but can’t possible name it all.

We could have ordered a bottle of wine off their extensive wine list for around £200 but we had a Portuguese red for £35. It was very nice.

As we were eating someone moved around the room and started swinging all the lights and then a bell clanged at that point people started clapping. We had no idea why but being British we joined in.

To get to the loo you had to go up an elaborate staircase at which we noticed couples posing in front of a huge mirror for a selfie so we tried that but the photo had the iPhone in it so I must have been doing something wrong.🤦‍♀️

If it was your birthday four surly pirates surrounded you, clapping and singing happy birthday (yes we all joined in of course) they however finished as quickly as they could so they could back to serving meat and fish without a smile passing their lips!

Then every now and then a man in full pirate gear but wearing white wellies came out with a mop and cleaned up any spillages.

Before we got the bill and prepared to leave I decided to go to the loo. When I got there, I felt something odd underfoot. It was crunchy and smelt of coffee. That’s because it was coffee, coffee beans to be precise, yes honestly, fresh coffee beans strewn all over the floor of a gaudy pink ladies which had a massive pair of pink lips above the toilet.

Well this is new I thought and I ordered an Uber for us to get back to our hotel. We possibly did not do justice to the all you can eat menu but we had a wonderful time and laughed a lot – it was fab!