Named for a wanderer.Built by people who stayed.
Vasco Da Gama sailed south looking for spice. Half a millennium later, two brothers from Madeira opened a taverna on his old harbour and did the same thing - just louder.
A suitcase of recipes, a harbour full of promise.
Álvaro Ferreira left Funchal in 1968 with two frying pans, a photograph of his mother's kitchen, and a note that read não voltes com fome - don't come home hungry. He didn't. He built a room where nobody else does either.
Everything we serve - the piri-piri paste, the caldeirada broth, the chorizo we still flame tableside - traces to a family recipe. Nothing is simplified. Nothing is toned down.
Maritime spirit
Restless, curious, always chasing the next horizon - and the next great bottle.
Bold flavours
No half measures. If it doesn't sing on the plate, it doesn't leave the pass.
Roaring rooms
Live music, loud laughter, and tables that pull together without asking.
Family first
Half our staff have worked here for a decade. Half our guests have too.
Fifty-two years of Friday nights.
- 1972
First candle lit
Brothers Álvaro and Manuel Ferreira open a 22-seat room off the harbour with two grills and one bottle of Madeira.
- 1981
The espetada arrives
The now-legendary hanging skewer debuts. Queues stretch down Harbour Road within a month.
- 1994
Democracy dinner
The taverna throws a free feast on April 27 - sailors, dockworkers, poets and diplomats at the same table.
- 2008
The second generation
Álvaro's daughter Mariana returns from Lisbon with a new wine list and the same stubborn recipes.
- 2022
Fifty years afloat
A three-day festival with live fado, marching bands, and 4,000 pastéis de nata given away at the door.
