L'Osteria Esslingen — Restaurant in Esslingen am Neckar

I came here with a group of ten for dinner with a reservation. Unfortunately there was no space for us outside so we sat inside in the back. It was incredibly warm, even with the windows open.

I assume the wait staff was stressed as the service was super slow. It took ages for us to get our drinks after ordering. I would estimate about a 15 minute wait for drinks.

We weren’t given enough utensils and it was hard to find someone to help us, so I took the liberty to find us enough utensils.

The food is ok. The selection on the menu is not big and the pizza and pasta variations are not huge. I ended up getting the anti pasta plate. It was pretty small and mediocre. Some of the items on the plate were pickled, meaning they came directly from a can or jar. I ended up still being hungry and ate some of my friend’s pizza.

The best part was that 8 people were served their hot dishes before me (I ordered the cold anti pasta dish) and my other friend (who ordered a cold salad) and ended up waiting another 7 minutes for us to receive our dishes before beginning to eat.

All in all, the food is ok and the service is mediocre. When we wanted to pay, it took another ten minutes to get the bill. Eventually the waitress told everyone to go to the computer so it would be easier for her to compute. Apparently the table next to us was incredibly angry because they also stood in line with us complaining. At the end, the other table told the waitress to take off the drinks they ordered 20 minutes ago during their meal off of their bill as they were not going to pay it. Then they ended up going to another waiter to pay as they were furious to deal with this waitress.

If you have no other choice for dinner,...

Unfortunately the very poor service outweighs the good food and beautiful location. We waited 25 minutes before our very rude waitress would even let us quickly ask for the check. 8 different times she walked Past and if we tried to ask for the check, she just interrupted us and said “one moment, one moment, one more moment“ which eventually led to my being very, very close to just walking out without paying. Luckily, my friend’s more patient approach prevailed. We had intended to order dessert and coffee, but gave that up after 15 minutes. When we were finally able to pay and leave, there were at least 10 parties of guests waiting for seating, while we waited to pay… The restaurant was indeed very busy on this evening, but had we been able to finish our sentence at one time or another, our waitress could have just dropped off the check on one of the trips past our table. And then, when she finally did come over, I asked for the check and for the leftovers to be packed, and she said “no no only one thing at a time“, which was quite the stupidest thing I had ever heard. It was rather like she was intentionally trying to make every little thing take just that much longer than...

Very very rude service. We made a reservation for 11:30. We were in a tight schedule and with a toddler. We arrived 11:25 and a rude server came out and said they were not open yet and that we were not allowed to come in (yes, I know, I was 5 minutes early, but since I was with a small kid, I hopped at least they would let us sit). My very disappointed kid then started crying at the door. After 2 minutes another (nicer) server came out and said we could sit already.

A few people came right after and sat inside and outside. The same initial rude server then proceeded to take the orders from everyone sitting inside and skipped us. Took the orders from everyone outside and then finally came to our table in a very bad mood. We asked to already order our food and he refused to take our order, he said he was just taking drinks orders at that point. We explained we had a hungry toddler and a tight scheduled and he refused to take our order. So we just got up and left and found another place to eat.

The location is beautiful, but unfortunately we will never know about the food as we won’t be...