La Farina Trattoria — Restaurant in Limassol Municipality

Definitely NOT an Italian restaurant. We recently returned from Napoli and were in the mood to revisit some of the amazing flavours of Italy with our visiting friend from the US. I obviously wasn’t expecting anything close to the food I had in Napoli, but it was a bit of a liberty to suggest that the food we had tonight was in any way Italian. Honey on pizza? Burrata “salad” that arrived in a tiny bowl of about 5 or 6 halves of cherry tomatoes, a teaspoon of pesto, with a burrata plopped on top. Grilled vegetables that consisted of five small thin slices of various veggies. And the best was the pasta. The menu just says “pasta” and does not even attempt to suggest what type of past. My “Arabiatta” consisted of shop-bought penne with some passata and chilli. That’s it, no seasoning, no vegetables, no olive oil, nothing. I used to make better penne at university with a jar of sauce and penne from Lidl. The pizza base was chewy and took a while to arrive. My red wine was not “room temperature” it was hot. Maybe they keep the wine next to the pizza oven? All the staff were Ukrainian/Russian and the chef is Ukrainian. I wasn’t offered any parmasan for my pasta, and by the time I managed to finally attract the attention of a waitress, I’d already eaten most of the dish. Then she proceeded to go in serving other tables before finally remembering the Parmesan. All the 5⭐ Google reviews and pictures of fancy dishes perfectly plated and smothered in cheese are clearly staged. The reality is nothing like that. The same story when we wanted some more drinks… you couldn’t find a staff to give you the time of day. The whole wait staff was erratic and disorganised, especially the Manager who was strutting around like a peacock instead of seeing to her customers. The only time the wait staff were attentive was when it came time to choose what tip to add to the card machine. I didn’t want to be mean and put 1 star, because I’ve worked in this business and know the hard work that goes in. But my advice would be, don’t do a cuisine that’s alien to you. You clearly have not studied Italian cuisine and I doubt you’ve even been to Italy. Instead, drop the Italian menu for a Ukrainian 🇺🇦 menu! I would definitely come back to try your authentic offerings. Oh and get a new Manager that knows hospitality so he/she can retrain the wait staff so they are more organised. Oh and try to smile…....

This wasn’t our first visit to this restaurant, but after tonight, it will most likely be our last. Unfortunately, the service we experienced was not only unprofessional, but bordered on disrespectful.

We were served by a young Ukrainian man, around 21 years old. While his English was limited, I genuinely appreciated his effort to communicate.

We visited on a quiet Sunday evening around 7 PM. The place was nearly empty, just us and later two more guests at another table. Despite the low foot traffic, the staff seemed more interested in chatting and laughing amongst themselves than attending to the few customers they had.

Things took a strange turn when I casually used the Russian word for “please” while speaking. I’m from Cyprus and am currently learning Russian as a hobby, so I thought I could practice a bit. His reaction was immediate and aggressive – he told me, unprompted, that he only speaks Ukrainian and that he hates Russian due to the war. I was shocked. I simply replied that the languages are somewhat similar and left it at that, but from that point on, his entire demeanor shifted – noticeably for the worse.

After we finished eating, I had to go inside and ask for the bill myself, as the servers were nowhere to be found. I also requested a takeaway box for my daughter’s leftover pasta. The server forgot the box initially, then took the plate inside. While that alone wouldn’t have bothered me, what happened next raised serious concerns.

From the window, I observed him repeatedly going in and out of the kitchen with the pasta and box in hand, clearly stalling while his colleagues sat around laughing. It became obvious we were being mocked or made fun of. At that point, I no longer trusted the food and felt deeply uncomfortable with the idea of giving it to my daughter.

We left the restaurant without the food, but the server followed us out with the bag, offering it without an apology, just a cold, unsettling smile. I threw the food away immediately after he left. I wasn’t willing to take any risks.

It’s such a shame, the restaurant has a lovely location, decent prices, and the food itself is not bad. But the lack of professionalism and the dismissive, even hostile, attitude from staff completely ruins the experience.

Until the management takes service and customer respect seriously, I cannot recommend this...

Me and my hubby went to try this new place on Sunday 12th of January during the lunch time. The restaurant was overbooked but a nice waiter provided us with the table without a reservation which was very kind of him. We felt exited about the new experience, however it took 15 min to get the attention of another waiter to make an order for one bottle of sparkling water, one salad, one pizza, one pasta con vongole and one risotto with mushrooms (some of the other dishes we wanted to order were not available though). After this we waited for another 10 min for a bottle of water and another 10 min for a small portion of a salad for two - this is it what we had during 1 hour… we kept catching the attention of only two waiters at the terrace with no success. Other guests were facing the same long waiting time to get their orders In the meantime. We’ve finally managed to ask our waiter to cancel the order after more than 1 hour waiting time and we were reassured that it’s coming in the next 6 min. We decided to give them a chance, however nothing happened in a due time… we lost our patience as we waited for too long, so we cancelled the order and left hungry and disappointed. It was obvious that this restaurant has an issue at the kitchen that is not capable to cope with the full seating. Felt sorry for the waiters who are managing the guests’ anger on the frontline. This restaurant should fix the processes in the kitchen and hire more staff to serve the guests…otherwise the guests will choose the nearby restaurants (which we did by going to Tartufo where our order was served within 20 min even though they’ve had the full...