Osteria Mattarello — Restaurant in Markham

TL;DR: Overpriced, exceptional service not enough to save mediocre food. Looks better than it tastes. 3.5* overall due to the amazing service.

Came for the first and last time, lol. Upon entering, you can immediately feel like this restaurant can belong in the 'Yorkville' area - posh looking decor with marble floors, gold accents and deep emerald green leather booths. The main dining space feels bigger than it actually is with the high ceilings and there's a separate private dining area near the entrance for groups.

While the atmosphere can be taken out of the 'Yorkville' area, the food, unfortunately, matches most of the restaurants there: nice presentation, but overpriced for the quality.

Appetizers: Squid ink arancini balls were actually really good and worth it. Sauce was yummy. Grilled calamari was cooked well, but wish there was some char to it. Decent portion.

Pastas: Best one is definitely the mushroom and truffle pappardelle. Our group also had the pesto gnocchi, seafood bucatini, bolognese tagliatelle. Gnocchi was made well, but sauce lacked flavour as with the bucatini and bolognese. They weren't tasteless, but not nearly enough flavour nor memorable for the price tag. Plus, I'm not even sure if their pasta is made fresh in-house (didn't taste like it / have the right texture; cooked too soft), which they should be at the $25+ per pasta dish price.

Pizza: Garlic pesto shrimp. Sounds tasty but the 'pizza' tasted more like bread. Not a fan at all.

Dessert; Hazelnut Zeppole and Lemon Mousse Cake were the best. Their version of 'tiramisu' wasn't anything like a tiramisu. It was a pastry with pistachio cream. If you actually like tiramisu and want some kind of resemblance to it, please skip this one.

Other notes: $3 for Coke / other pop in a small glass with huge ice cubes is absolutely ridiculous, unless they had free refills. Didn't order "Bread and Butter" because it was $12... You better be hand-churning your own butter and making bread from scratch for that price, lol. Even restaurants that do that give it for free!!

The brightest part of the restaurant is the flawless service. Server was very attentive and friendly. She checked-in with us throughout dinner and wasn't overbearing or pushy with the orders. We didn't have to wait long for the food and drinks either.

Overall, Italian cuisine is a very competitive space throughout the city without a shortage of options. So at these price points, you can definitely get better bang for your buck, even from a...

My experience at Osteria Mattarello was nothing short of a complete disaster—easily one of the worst dining experiences I’ve ever had. From start to finish, the service was incompetent, the food was borderline inedible, and the pricing was a blatant cash grab.

Let’s start with the service, or lack thereof. When my table arrived, we were literally the only customers in the restaurant. Another table came in 10 minutes after us, yet somehow, they got their food first. How does that even happen? Are they cooking based on some mysterious queue system where earlier customers get punished? It’s not like they were busy.

Then came the water scam. When asked what water I wanted, I was only given two options: sparkling or still. Naturally, I chose still, only to later find out that I was charged $8 for a bottle of water. Why? Because they conveniently “forgot” to mention that tap water was an option. That’s blatant dishonesty, and $8 for water is ridiculous even at actual fine dining establishments. Some of the best restaurants in the world offer free still water, yet this joke of a place thinks it’s justified to overcharge for something that costs them nothing? Embarrassing.

Now onto the food, which was somehow even worse than the service. My table ordered the hot honey chicken and some pizzas. The chicken was an absolute disgrace—dry, chewy, and tough. If I wanted something this bad, I could’ve microwaved some week-old leftovers and saved myself the money. The pizzas? An insult to Italian cuisine. They tasted like $10 frozen pizzas you’d get from a grocery store, except somehow worse. For a place calling itself “Osteria,” the food was laughable. If I wanted low-quality pizza, I could’ve gone to literally any chain restaurant and had a better experience for a fraction of the price.

To top it all off, once we finally got our food, the staff completely ignored us. Not once did anyone check in to see if we needed anything. No refills, no “how’s the food?”—nothing. It’s like they knew how bad the food was and didn’t want to deal with complaints. Honestly, I have zero experience as a waiter, but I guarantee I could have done a better job than these people.

This place is an absolute scam—from the overpriced water to the horrendous food and atrocious service, there’s not a single redeeming quality. If you value your time, money, and taste buds, stay far, far away from Osteria Mattarello. I wouldn’t go back even if they...

Came here to celebrate our 7th anniversary, and am very disappointed. I put a special request in OpenTable to bring out dessert with “Happy Anniversary” written on it. Someone even called the day of our reservation about my request to confirm and asked if it was a surprise - it was. Here’s how the evening went…we arrived at the restaurant, and encountered 2 girls who had their backs turned away from us doing something, and didn’t greet us until a couple mins later as we just stood there awkwardly. When we sat down, we ordered Frittura Di Mare, Mushroom Truffle Mafalda, and Beef Ragu Pappardelle. Overall the pastas were 7.5/10, but nothing special and glad we didn’t pay full price for it. Their pastas are $22 on Tuesdays. Not once did a server come by to check on us. Someone only came to clear our plates, still didn’t ask how things were, didn’t offer a dessert menu or if we wanted the bill. They cleared the table and walked away. I figured maybe they didn’t offer us a dessert menu or the bill because they saw a note on my reservation about the surprise tiramisu. We waited for quite some time and nothing was happening. Finally I asked for the bill, hoping it would prompt them to see my request. Nothing came, I paid the bill and left. Extremely disappointing. Also, our water was only refilled the time I asked...