Via Monte Mainz — Restaurant in Mainz

They report and delete all the bad reviews. I saw it with my own eyes. Luckily, I complained to Google and got my review reinstated. Tourist trap! Be careful!”

Creepiest experience!

It’s truly baffling how this restaurant has a 4.8-star rating.

We ordered two starters: shrimp and calamari. The shrimp was fine—nothing special but not bad either, except for the two-day-old bread served with it. The calamari, however, was a complete joke. They used those fake calamari rings from Metro, likely Aro brand, which contain only about 60% squid mixed with flour and other fillers. Not even real calamari! To make things worse, the oil they were fried in was clearly old, leaving a bitter aftertaste that hurt my mouth.

For the main course, we had truffle pasta (prepared tableside in a Parmesan wheel—sounds exciting, right?) and classic spaghetti carbonara.

The truffle pasta was made with a pre-packaged truffle sauce that mostly consisted of artificial truffle aroma. The shaved “truffles” on top smelled like nothing and were most likely those cheap Bulgarian truffle-lookalikes that cost €5-6 per 100g. We could have overlooked this if the pasta hadn’t been salted to oblivion. The chef clearly forgot that the Parmesan wheel itself is salty and added way too much salt, making the dish completely inedible.

Then came the carbonara, which was even worse. It tasted like plain, unsalted pasta water. The sauce was thin and watery, sinking to the bottom of the plate. No amount of mixing helped—it was just flavorless. After two bites, we gave up.

€90 for two starters and two mains that we couldn’t even eat. As a chef, it’s disheartening to see restaurants charging so much while serving such below-average food.

UPDATE:

After leaving my honest review, the restaurant owner, Toni, somehow found my wife’s phone number, called her, and asked for me. At first, I thought he wanted to apologize for our bad experience, but I was wrong.

He started by offering me a job (since I am also a chef), which was already unexpected. Then, he falsely claimed that we had finished our plates and still left a bad review—which was simply not true. Even the waiter noticed our untouched food and asked if something was wrong. When I corrected him, he insisted and basically called me a liar.

I explained once again why I wrote the review and mentioned that I don’t usually leave negative reviews unless truly necessary. His response? He got offended, told me I was “dishonest” and just trying to make him look bad. Then he said, “If you know better, why don’t you open a restaurant and we’ll see how you do?” (Spoiler: I already ran several successful restaurants both in Las Vegas and Mainz.)

The creepiest part? When we were discussing the bread they served with the shrimp, he said it was sourdough bread. I told him it wasn’t. Instead of accepting the criticism, he somehow researched my hometown and told me that since sourdough bread “doesn’t exist” there, I wouldn’t even know what it is.

Instead of an apology, I got lies, insults, and an owner who went out of his way to dig into my personal background. Definitely one of the strangest and most unprofessional experiences I’ve ever had with...

Can’t knock the product, food and wine were very good, but the service was subpar. As soon as we walked in, we waited to be seated as we had a reservation and were dismissively told to sit wherever. Staff genuinely looked unorganised and out of place in general, once we received our food, my partner had the wrong dish and when he pointed out the error, the waitress quite rudely corrected him insisting he order spaghetti with gambas instead of carbonara. We were quite taken aback by this but insisted that he ordered the carbonara. The mistake was corrected very quickly which was appreciated but there was no apology from the waitress and the plate was delivered with a very unfriendly look from her :/ the dish was then not corrected from the receipt but at the very least the waitress gave us the dish difference back. When we were leaving another member of staff (the manager or owner we assumed) came to check on us and was friendly but it was a bit late. The food as mentioned before was very good and tasty as well as the wine, but the attitude of waitresses and dismissive atmosphere definitely made us...

Seit längerem stand der Plan das Via Monte aufzusuchen und heute war es endlich soweit. Wir wurden freundlich empfangen und durften uns aussuchen ob wir drinnen oder draußen sitzen möchten. Da das Wetter es mitspielte entschieden wir uns für draußen und so wurde uns der Weg dorthin erklärt. Dort angekommen dauerte es etwas bis wir unseren Tisch zugewiesen bekommen haben. Die Speise und Getränkekarte folgten schnell und auch unsere Bestellung wurde zügig aufgenommen, was aber auch leider das ( fast ) einzig zügige an diesem Abend war. Mein Gast entschied sich für Tortellini und ich Bruschetta als Vorspeise, die wir uns teilten, und als Hauptgang einen Salat mit Garnelen. Die Getränke benötigten ca. 15 Minuten, die Vorspeise 30 Minuten, welche zwar schön angerichtet war jedoch das Brot nur trocken und nicht geröstet. Für die Hauptspeisen hat es weitere 40 Minuten benötigt wobei mir ein Salat mit Steak anstelle von Garnelen gebracht wurde, was aber innerhalb von 10 Minuten korrigiert wurde. Der Salat war geschmacklich gut und die Tortellini laut Aussage auch. Zum Salat wurde auch Brot gereicht was aber auch trocken und zäh war. Wir entschieden uns später noch für ein Dessert was jedoch auch eine verhältnismäßig langen Zeit in Anspruch nahm bis es endlich serviert wurde. Alles in allem hat es einfach zu lange gedauert. Leider kam die Bedienung nicht von sich auf uns zu um nachzufragen ob noch was an Getränken oder ähnliches gewünscht würd. Zumindest ging es mit der...