Sprezzatura — Restaurant in Dublin

We went to Sprezzatura after seeing a lot of hype online about it being a tasty, authentic Italian “hidden gem.” Unfortunately, the experience really didn’t live up to the reviews.

We booked a table on a Thursday evening. It wasn’t busy, maybe 7 or 8 tables, but the service was slow and inattentive. There are no physical menus—only a QR code to view it on your phone—but you still have to order through staff, which feels unnecessarily awkward.

We started with the cheese arancini. They were hot and crispy but bland and lacking any real flavour. For mains, we ordered the cacio e pepe and the lemon pasta—both were seriously disappointing. The cacio e pepe was overloaded with black pepper, had no emulsified sauce, and just tasted like plain buttered noodles with pepper. There was no hint of pecorino, parmesan, or any cheesy richness. The lemon pasta was equally flat, with no creamy or cheesy element, and both dishes looked quite sad on the plate—presentation was poor and unappealing. The pasta also felt like it had been sitting out too long, losing freshness and texture.

No staff ever returned to check on us. Nobody asked how our food was—even though I had barely touched mine. When we were ready to leave, we asked for the bill and no one came back. We had to flag down a different server just to get it. The lack of basic, timely service was frustrating.

Drinks were another letdown. Everything is on tap. We ordered an Aperol Spritz and a cola, but the only option was “Finches” cola—which was flat, overly sweet, and didn’t taste like cola. No Coke Zero or alternative options were available. Even the tap water came in greasy carafe, which was upsetting.

The restaurant itself is cute and has potential, but the food quality, lack of care in presentation, and poor service made this a really disappointing experience. We won’t...

I recently ate here with colleagues after work. The service was great and the waiters very friendly and attentive. We were lucky enough to eat there on the first night of the new menu. While I can't comment on the rest of the party's meal, I will say a couple of words about mine. We shared the olives & sourdough plates to start - the olives were overwhelmingly garlicky and the sourdough was served with rapeseed oil? For such quality bread and eating in an Italian restaurant, I was surprised the bread wasn't served with Irish olive oil. The rapeseed really took away from the flavour of the bread and had a terrible mouth feel. I had the amatriciana for main course - while tasty it could have done with more guanciale for enhanced smokiness. That being said, the portion was quite big so good value for money I felt. Disappointingly, the parmesan served seemed to be the pre-grated kind and didn't seem fresh - larger shavings of fresh parmesan would have been preferred.

A couple of areas for improvement.. 1) wine glasses - if you are committed to serving good quality wine, a quality wine glass would be appreciated rather than a wine tumbler; 2) no receipt was provided despite me entering my email address into the system; 3) I've had to resort to Google Reviews to get in contact with the restaurant about point 2 as I need a receipt to expense the meal - a bit frustrating that there is no email / phone number to contact the restaurant

I've been wanting to try here for a while and have to say I was overall not that impressed. I could make similar on a weekday myself so won't be...

Myself and my fiancé have wanted to eat here for ages and we were left so dissapointed. The food was nice but definitely nothing extraordinary. The atmosphere was so weird, being told as soon as you arrive that you have 1hr and 15 mins is horrible. When you come out for dinner you are coming out for the experience too and I would expect at least a 2 hour slot. When we sat down my fiancé asked what way do people normally order as there was antipasti, plates and pasta. This is not a standard menu and is not intuitive. Our server looked at us like we had asked the strangest question ever and proceeded to tell us how quickly our food would arrive.

The food came out at an ungodly pace, 5 mine after we ordered our starters arrived and once the plates were cleared our pasta was on the table. It took the joy out anticipating the next course and also letting food go down. We ordered a coffee with dessert and it was the longest wait we had, our desserts were long since eaten before our coffee flavoured water arrived. That is the only way to described the americano's we were presented with.

I understand being a paperless location but I HATE menus via a QR code. I feel like I'm at nandos or mcdonalds and you are introducing a phone to a setting that should be phone free. Also when we asked for the bill we were not shown any list to ensure only what we ordered was on it, if you want to go paperless then offer to email the receipt.

Overall weird vibe, nice...