La Promenade dei Templi — Restaurant in Agrigento

Generally we were disappointed by our lunch here. Ultimately the food was just a disgrace. It starts off with an over-priced Cola Zero with a glass, cold and that's it. No ice. No lemon. No lime. Nothing. There are place in Agrigento (see my review of Bar Athenea) which charge less, have more atmosphere and serve a can of cola in the correct way. Then we had ordered a plate of chicken breast (purchased for about €0,35 and battered to make it look bigger than it really was) which was slathered then drowned in a faintly disgusting looking pistachio sauce (was it creamy? Who knows?) and served to us for €15 or €16. I don't want to think about what we paid for this utter disgrace of a plate. The chef should hang his head in shame. We had some pretty weird cannoli wrapped in bacon which were OK at best. Accompanying that we also picked an octopus & potato salad. I KNOW that this octopus wasn't fresh. I am 99% sure that the octopus is from frozen and defrosted on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and then chucked into this rather ugly series of potato cubes. Simply said nothing was made with love, it all tasted pretty disgusting and it was VERY VERY bad value for money. We wished we'd have just had a panini and been done with it.

That said we chose it because of the location and at least we managed to secure a table on the nice terrazza. It certainly majors on its proximity to the Valley of the Temple. The waiter was friendly enough but at the end of the day a restaurant is there to serve yummy delicious food that you wouldn't be able to cook anywhere at home in the same way. The Italians are, reputationally, the masters at this. This was about as un-Italian an experience as can possibly be imagined. I've had way better Italian meals in America, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, UK and The Netherlands. What a disappointment! Really they should...

This is a delayed post. Last March, we visited Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples where I learned a couple of bitter lessons.

First, do not rush your visit - we only had 90 minutes of a guided tour - a great mistake, because we actually needed 9 hours instead of 90 minutes ☹️

The second lesson: after the rushed tour, we also had a rushed lunch - I wasn’t so hungry so I decided to split one dish with my husband: The Cavatelli all Norma - as you can see in the (messy) photo, he gave me a half portion. Big mistake. The tomato sauce was out of this world and I didn’t realize eggplants could be so delicious! Our guide said the cook had just prepared the sauce from fresh tomatoes that morning.

I’m not a big pasta eater, but this is now at the top of my pasta list (must go to Agrigento...

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!! A “light lunch” for 74 euros. My sister ordered a mixed salad and frutta/fruit….but what arrived was fried calamari. We explained that we wanted fruit, not calamari, but the waiter explained that they didn’t have fruit today. Flustered, we said, ok…we can eat the calamari (big mistake!!). When we got the bill it was much more than we expected. We learned that the calamari was 22 euros! We talked to the manager to see if there could be some adjustment…nope! Since it was partly their mistake, I guess I expected them not to charge us 5 euros “service” or some kind...