Di Bella — Restaurant in County Westmeath

Honestly not a great experience. Went for dinner last night, I always wanted to give it go given the good reviews. I ended up be very disappointed: Menu: typical Italian menu modified to cater for an irish taste, which is ok considering that you have to cater for your customers and do business, but seriously not even a small choice of authentic Italian food? The only pasta in the menu you would find in an Italian restaurant back home (in Italy) would probably be the penne alla vodka (but you would need a time travel machine too and go back to the 80s). And no let's not talk about the carbonara they have on the menu, the real one is a complete different recipe, I honestly do not understand why they keep using that name which refers to a completely different dish.

Food quality: Subpar at best. There are many thing that went wrong, but let me focus on the 2 that apparently should be their piece of resistance: Pasta: the Prawn and zucchini tasted simply awful, they used a cheap fish stock that overpowered every type of flavour... Pizza: the style of choice was classic (so if you expect a napoli contemporanea, which you may have tried on your vacation in the bel paese, well that's not here). Honestly is the most famous outside italy and its absolutely gorgeous if done properly... well that was not the case. The dough looked and tasted strange, I was expecting something close to what I would get back home, but it was not the case. It is actually ironic that the best pizza in athlone town is done by a brewery (but that is another story).

Price: the real price do not reflect their online page, and honestly as other reviewer said it end up to be really expensive. Specially for drinks. (I mean 7 euro for a 33cl Moretti, or 5 for water...)

Service: it was okish

Overall as Italian I can state, not an authentic Italian experience at all. There are realities that are pushing for more real Italian food, because you know, even in Athlone people are travelling, discovering, finally experiencing italy and Europe in general. They are ready for the real deal! We are not on the 80s anymore... even if they had the best music and I get...

Awful experience at this restaurant! A few of our graduation class decided to go for dinner together and we chose this restaurant. Some of us don't drink so we asked for water with our meal. The waitress seemed displeased that we were asking for water and informed us that they charge 2.50 for tap water...it all went downhill from there. We expressed surprise at being charged for tap water but agreed to pay it. The waitress left and two minutes later we approached by the owner who started to berate us for questioning the tap water charge! She went on at length about the business rates in Athlone, how much she had to pay her staff, her rent etc. Then she told us that they can't sustain people coming in and taking advantage of them by ordering water!! This went on for quite a while and made us all incredibly uncomfortable. We would have left at this point if not for one of our party having a very very hungry two year old with her. For the rest of the evening all the staff threw us dirty looks as they passed our table and were quite short with us when they were serving us. At the end of the evening when it was time to pay we were told that we could split the bill but we would have to pay in cash. We asked the waitress where the nearest ATM was she just shrugged and when we tried to explain that only two of us had brought cash and the rest only had card she said 'no, you need to pay cash, leave it on the table' and walked off! We went downstairs to the til to try and explain and this time we ended up being berated by both owners, one of whom was still giving out to us about the water and how much we'd upset them all by questioning the 2.50 charge!!! Honestly we would have forgotten about the charge and enjoyed our meal and probably had a nice evening if the owners had left us alone, but I will never in my life forget the way we were treated by the owners of this restaurant. It seems from reading other reviews that the water issue has been building into a resentment for some time...I suggest the owners take the money that they're charging for glasses of tap water and invest in some...

Me, my partner and our 4y.o. son went to restaurant for Sunday family meal. At the entrance we asked for table and we were told to wait a moment. After around 10min we got information, that one table just paid and they have to clean the table. We end up waiting around 15min at the door for table. We did not get even menu to have a look of what we want to order. On the little table at the door it was menu marked for T/A, so were not sure if sit in menu will be the same. I would like to add also, that upstairs restaurant has tables as well and they didn't use them. We order starters : garlic bread, garlic bread with peppers, chicken and cheese and chicken wings. Garlic bread was terrible ! Slice of bread grilled with some butter. Terrible presentation. Wings - 4 wings on the table and bad presentation as well. My son order pizza from kids menu and he wanted a little bit of plain pasta on the side. We were charged 7.50e for pizza and 7.50 for plain pasta! You clearly need more ingredients for pizza and pasta so where is the logic in this price ! They don't serve tap water or MiVadi and forcing You to buy drinks. We also had some wine, beer and juice for child so its not like we were trying to avoid paying for drinks. I would like to add also, that I had lovely view from my table on waitress in black shirt standing in kitchen, eating food, licking her fingers and go straight away to serve other customer without washing her hands! We left 120e in restaurant and we will never...