Trattoria Positano — Restaurant in Budapest

We went to this restaurant on a cold Saturday night couple of weeks ago. We checked their menus and the food in advance (well it figured out totally unnecessary) as we really craved for a nice Italian dinner… The restaurant and the staff seemed very nice and they took our orders pretty quickly. However there was a big company ahead of us so we had to wait a bit longer to get our first dish. We shared the bruschetta for starter then we tried the “creamy” tomato soup. Well…… the bruschetta would have been pretty yummy if the topping on that hadn’t done like… too cold. It was like they just took quickly out of the fridge and just put it on the bread just before serving so it didn’t taste fresh at all. The other thing we didn’t like that we checked ALL the pictures on Google … and figured out our food really looked different on the promotional pictures than in real life… . Bruschetta for example on the pics was 3 bigger crispy breads in one portion (that’s why we decided to share) but we just got 2 small like one-bite appetizer breads and a little half-bite of something. Then came the “creamy” soup that never really met any cream at all. That was the worst dish amongst the three we ate there. No fresh ingredients it tasted like canned tomato with tomato paste and little pepper and salt. That was the point we almost left and wanted to cancel our last dish but we were really hungry and didn’t want to search for another restaurant in the neighborhood as it was pretty late. For main we ordered Lasagna that saved the night and the only issue we had again was the size of the portion. Probably because after that “one-bite” starter and a not-so-tasty soup we were still very hungry and at that point we spent more than an hour there already without eating much. The funny thing we usually never complain about the size of a dish in a restaurant. But the Lasagna was tasty, well cooked and as I mentioned before it saved the night. The staff was kind however not overly attentive to all the details. There was another thing I need to mention because it was pretty awkward and we tried to handle it with humor…. when we asked for parmesan cheese for our tomato soup and later for Lasagna they didn’t want to leave the cheese cup at the table (usually in Italian restaurants there is always one at the table or they put one on your table at the beginning) so we had to ask a young lady 2 times to get it and she seemed like to measure it rigorously (she gave one little spoon for everyone each time) and felt like she always checked how much left of the amount she could give us. I think the problem here is that they need to find their style and their category amongst restaurants. We felt like they try to overhype their place a bit which would be fine, but then the quality needs to meet the expectations and their prices at last…. and when sharing promotional or advertising pictures on Google then it’s advisable to fit the looks how it will go in the restaurant. The place itself was clean and had nice interior design but the bathroom needs to be checked much more regularly especially on...

The Pizza's we ordered were delicious, although they arrived around 1h45m after our arrival. It might not have been their evening but several things went wrong. When i saw another couple which came after us being served their pizza's i got suspicious, especially when thereafter we were served different pizza's then we ordered. Apparently they were served ours. To kill the waiting time for our pizza's we ordered another round of drinks. Unfortunately they never arrived. Of the drinks we before ordered my girlfriend could not taste the Martini in the drink she ordered (some Lemon Martini mix or so). The two girls who were serving were pretty busy (serving and making drinks) but a manager was lingering around all the time, smoking and observing things going wrong but not doing anything to help the waitresses or communicating with the clients about the problems. This is what i found a bit disappointing. He knew we were not served because i saw him discussing it at the bar and pointing at us but he never came to us. The atmosphere was further really nice during this warm summer evening and he quality of the food also, compliments to the kitchen staff. Hopefully when we come back next time the other issues will be...

The pizza was done very well and the wine syrah was great. However that was pretty much it. The experience started disappointing with multiple ingredients missing meaning we could not order the pasta carbonara, nor the tagliatelle tartufo.

On the third choice, the spinach ravioli the pasta sauce was very watery. When we asked for extra parmasean cheese they said they had no more parmasean. Asking for a different kind of cheese, they came around with parmasean after all. When expressing our experience the manager first admitted to it and said nothing, then the server gave us a shot of alcohol to compensate.

On top of all of this. We felt pressured by the staff to write a good review. Staff was very friendly to everyone who was Hungarian and took time to connect with locals. With us that was not the case and the communication was mainly a one way street about putting up a good review. Not sure if the rating is...