Vila Joya

Vila Joya is a Relais & Châteaux boutique hotel perched above the Praia da Galé beach west of Albufeira, and the restaurant it built has held two Michelin stars continuously since 1999 — the longest unbroken run of two-star recognition in Portugal. Chef Dieter Koschina, Austrian by training but Algarvian by residence for more than three decades, has run the kitchen throughout.

The dining room is the restaurant's signature photograph: a horseshoe-shaped open-air terrace cantilevered over a cliff, facing due south across the Atlantic, roofed in summer with a white linen canopy and set with thirty-two seats. Inside, a Moorish-inflected salon handles cooler evenings. Both rooms look directly at the sea; the ocean does most of the decorating.

Koschina's cooking is classical European with a coastal Portuguese accent. A langoustine ravioli with consommé and white truffle butter is a signature; Atlantic sea bass is served with black olive tapenade and Algarve citrus; Iberian pork presa comes with a Madeira reduction and cardamom jus. The wine list is one of the deepest in Portugal — both Douro and Bordeaux run long — and the sommelier team is practiced.

Tasting menus run €285 (seven courses) and €345 (full); pairings €185. Rooms in the hotel book months ahead; many diners stay and walk straight from the table to a nightcap on the pool terrace two doors away.

Vila Joya is the European proposal restaurant — no longer a secret but still extraordinary. The clifftop terrace at sunset, the attention the staff pay to a table, the absolute privacy (the hotel is small, the room quiet, the cliff deserted) and the elegance of the adjoining rooms combine into an evening that is genuinely difficult to improve on. For a proposal with a European flight attached, this is the table.