L'Osteria — Restaurant in Graz

The L'Osteria is a great Italian restaurant located in the heart of Graz, in the center of the Old Town of the City of Graz, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The staff has this typical and charming Italian accent, since the waiters are from Italy.

The food is simply gorgeous, the pizzas are huge - I mean really huge - and the pasta tastes great as well and by the way so tastes the risotto and the insalata mista, the mixed salad. All is very nicely decorated dishes are fancy to look at as well as delicious in taste. Just to mention it again the pizza is not just great but huge and you easily need to put something into the doggy bag for taking home with you.

I had a delicious Salami Pizza and my company had a Pizza Hawaii, as well as a hot-salami pizza called Salsiccia Piccante, and a Rucola Pizza which all came in huge sizes and nicely arranged. Oh, and just to mention it, the pizzas are super-thin and the exact opposite of a Chicago-style pizza, if you are searching for that kind of food. Here at L'Osteria the pizzas are the Napoli-style, the southern Italian pizza, which are super-thin.

The interior of the restaurant comes with all sorts of arts and decoration on the wall, in this typical fancy Italian style, as Italians seem to be natural-born taste experts. Here at L'Osteria they even have an Italian-German course, which activates automatically as soon as somebody enters the restrooms. I only can say something about the language course on the men's room, what happens on the ladies' room I don't know. But I guess, the language course lessons are similar, but with exchanged roles and storylines.

From Graz with Love! Dr. Dr....

Overpriced, considering what you get. Food not exactly bad, but that's the best you can say about it. Also obviously not Italian in any way, but Italian inspired. Service is ok. Bathrooms are very nice. Weird, vaguely racist comment on menu, explaining how the dishes in your order may not arrive together, because that's "the Italian moment" it takes.

Edit: Other commenters remark on the charming Italian accent of the waiters. I don't think it matters much where the waiters come from, but as far as I can tell, not a single one is Italian in this place. I have been here four times and our waiters had Hungarian, Eastern European, or German/Austrian accents and not a single one of them spoke Italian, apart from the few words corporate policy apparently requires them to say, like "buongiorno", "ciao", "grazie". When you answer them in Italian, you get blank looks, and when yesterday's waiter brought a pizza to our table he called it "pizza marghereta"... Doesn't bother me (unlike the mediocre, yet comparatively expensive food), but if you like authentic Italian atmosphere (or authentic Italian cuisine, for that matter), this place isn't for you. As for calling the pizza here "Napoli style"... I'm glad that poster liked his pizza, but appart from the round shape the pizza here has very little in common with pizza how it is...

I have given 2 stars instead of 1 because they didn't charge us for drinks (1 iced tea), offered us desert and a coffee (we declined) and gave us a 10% discount on the pizzas. Luckily Alberto helped clear up the issues we encountered. After not having been to Osteria for a year, we were looking forward to coming back today for the Orecchiete and various Pizzas available. We waited 1 hour for 2 pizzas (half/half) with 2 young kids (8+4) having ordered at 6pm, other tables also received their food (main courses) before us. I asked one waitress who walked past how long we could expect the pizzas to arrive and she didn't come back. Later I asked another waiter (Alberto), if there was something wrong and he went to investigate. We were about to pay for our drinks and leave but then Alberto arrived with one pizza, that was cold. The other pizza arrived 10 minutes later, half of which was the wrong order and the tre Funghi special was... Delays happen and tickets get misplaced, but the Pizzas were really disappointing; minimal toppings, pale and stale crust. Service was friendly but disorganised and unattentive. A shame because we liked coming here and there isn't a shortage of Pizza...