The Restaurante Costa do Sol is the city's most famous restaurant and one of its longest survivors. Opened in 1933 in a salmon-pink Art Deco building right on the bay at the end of the Avenida Marginal, it has changed barely at all in nine decades — the wooden ceilings, the long bar, the terrace tables, the heavy white tablecloths.
The menu is unwavering: charcoal-grilled prawns (sold by 100g, with a minimum order that arrives shoulder-high), grilled lobster, peixe espada (cutlassfish), calamari, matapa — and a long list of vinho verde and white wines to wash it all down. Service is unhurried; prices are not cheap by Mozambican standards but reasonable by international. Sunday lunch is the institution; book ahead if there are more than two of you.