Wild Orchid - Hamilton

On Saturday evening, for the first time to visit, food was great, food and wine recommendations were excellent, service excellent. Would definitely recommend

Lively atmosphere, very accommodating staff. Loved the Calamari, the beef a casa, and of course to finish the custard tarts! A great place for a group dinner.

Another excellent visit to Wild Orchid our staples are the grilled sardines, rabbits and piri piri chicken (which comes with authentic frits! . We also like that you can buy Portuguese wine at a very reasonable price for a full litre, in the same way... offered in Europe. Since it is now too difficult to come to Europe, this small slice is welcomed by Portugal! Your renovated terrace is also wonderful in summer.

The food here is Portuguese and is excellent. You need a reservation during this lockdown and parking can be a problem here. Our server was very nice, but somewhat overwhelmed when it seemed to be the only staff on the hand. All in all, it was a pleasant experience and I would recommend this restaurant.

We had booked a table for our 22nd wedding anniversary. We were only allowed to book a table for the inside but would have to wear a face mask while waiting for our food. Understandable considering it was the day that Hamilton received the ok...from Ford govt to allow for indoor seating in restaurants. Fortunately when we got there, there were a couple of patio tables that were free, so we could sit outside without face masks. The glass tables that we had sat at were smudged/dirty, and the comfy chairs were also untidy (had seen better days), and the area smelt unclean. There was a guy who was cleaning the inside windows of the restaurant, right where we were sitting outside. It was a Friday evening at 7pm, why would you have someone cleaning windows right in the middle of a busy Friday evening, your first day of re-opening?????? We had been waiting to try out their seafood paella for the longest time. We had originally tried to order take-out back in October 2019 for my birthday but were told over the phone call that they were slammed and could not take our order. Never had a restaurant say that they couldn’t take our take out order before. Should have listened to the warning bells back then. We ordered the seafood paella for two, with the grilled sardines as an appetizer. The sardines were nicely grilled. Although we were battling to eat them before the black flies would land on them. They should have fly zappers or something for those pesky bugs. Our paella looked great in the iron pot that it came in, but we discovered that the lobster tail was mostly shell as well as for the crab. The food wasn’t seasoned well enough. It just tasted like tomato rice with seafood bits in it with an after-taste of the metal pot!! Yuk! We were given little side plates to individually eat from with very limited napkins (the server said that they had little stock in since they had just opened, so no extra napkins except for the one cloth napkin that we given for our app and a few thin cheap takeout napkins), nothing to wipe our messy hands with; no wet wipes either. It’s really difficult to keep your fingers clean while eating paella. I did get an extra cloth napkin when I asked but still would have appreciated wet wipes or a hand bowl to clean up our sticky hands. My husband did mention to our server whether the shell fish should have had more meat in it rather than just decorative shells, she said that she would let the owner know, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, we were not happy with our most anticipated visit, the food was medicore and the restaurant needs more attention to detail if they want repeat customers.