La Parolaccia Trattoria — Restaurant in Autonomous City of Buenos Aires

4.4, 15k reviews and I wonder how. I m italian and I always enjoy the local food at his max, carefully avoiding any Italian restaurants, cause, as my experience thought me, they are often disappointing. However my girlfriend was craving for pasta, after several days of porteño food and tons of meat, so we decided to go to an Italian resto around Puerto Madero and with his raiting and reviews number La Parolaccia immediately came up. The restaurant is facing the canal with a nice outdoor area, were round tables are displayed, making the movement among them pretty difficult, first recommendation, use round tables only for Parisienne cafe and chinese restaurants. Anywya we decided to stay outside despite the wind, inside was freezing cold 🥶. The waiter immediately welcomed us, they are probably the only good thing together with the atmosphere, to be generous. We ordered mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto, nothing cooked so it was fine, then we had a seafood spaghetti, it was probably the worst choice we could've made it. Three frozen mussels, couple of tasteless shrimps with two scallops shels without scallop(ridiculous), in a bland tomato sauce, clearly the tomato sauce wasn't cooked with fish stock or the seafood in the pasta, was a simply saltless sauce. We barely finished the pasta and asked the bill immediately pretty disappointed and still hungry, with our surprise the waiter offeres us 2 glasses of sparkling wine in order to apologize for the limited bottles availability, in fact we tried to order several bottles that were not available, anyhow the waiter was really kind and I put 2 stars instead of 1, just because of the service we've received. Other than that, if you are really looking for an italian resto experience, definetely this is NOT the...

Not bad at all. The location is perfect and the restaurant is very presentable and the prices more than sensible (earning USD).

However, I feel it’s the service that lets it down the most. It took the best part of 20 mins to gain the attention of the waiter, as we requested a menu English, he stated he would be there in a moment, 15 mins later no sign.

Eventually we managed to order food (free of an English menu that was requested over half an hour prior).

Food took a age to come and it was okay. Having ordered soup, I guess the journey from the kitchen was a bumpy one, as the soup was splashed all over the bowl.

Re the food it was fairly good, but the fettuccine Bolognese I ordered, was far too dry as per the pictures (it was nothing better than I could make at home, arguable worse).

Not a bad place, good location, poor service and lacklustre food, most importantly, the service is horrendous and it did take the best part of two hours to get the food out and eventually pay. And for a work lunch that’s way too long.

After reading the reviews, it’s most clear, that the posted reviews are very subjective. If you travel a heap and know Italian food and appreciate good service, this place is...

5/5 stars of the dishes we ordered were excellent. I could eat their lasagna using ground veal everyday. The risotto was correctly al dente and was full of flavor. The frutti di mare spaghetti was just bursting with umami. The funghi ravioloni though simple in its ingredients was the best dish and is a must-try. The veal Milanese was nothing to write home about but still good and we had to try since it’s an Argentinian favorite as we were told.

My thinking is that classy restaurants do not try to gouge you with extra charges here and there. The restaurant has a mandatory service charge. Fine. At the end the waiter asked how much tip to add, I said none since there is a service charge. He pointed out that the menu mentions the service charge. I said no tip again because of the service charge. He then had to gall to proceed and just added his tip to the total on the charge machine and had to audacity to ask ok? Sounds low class. If you don’t like this kind of wretched behavior ending your good meal, think twice about patronizing...