La Sosta di Pio VII — Restaurant in Barberino Tavarnelle

When you arrive, you are greeted by a sign that says “to mothers: if your child makes a fuss, we will break your child” (Italian: “avviso alle mamme: se il bambino rompe, vi si rompe il bambino”). We should have left there and then… We visited on a recommendation from a local for my mother’s 70th birthday as an extended family with five children (who were, poor things, actually pretty well behaved). This special birthday was indicated on booking but never mentioned by the staff let alone any kind of gesture to make her birthday special, as any nice restaurant would normally arrange. But this is not really a “nice” restaurant. The service is quite frankly shocking. We arrived on time and we asked if they could serve the children first as they were hungry. No chance. They had their agenda and wanted to serve us their usual antipasti and then meat. So half the kids didn’t eat till the meat came, which took forever, even though we were the first in the restaurant when it opened. If you don’t want kids in your restaurant, fine, just make it adults only and tell people no kids when they book. Then for drinks: the only options were water, wine, Fanta or full sugar coke. Seriously. No juice, no suitable drinks for kids at all other than water. Also, the service was surly and unprofessional, especially from the female staff, and at some times downright rude (for example when we were told that they only have coke and Fanta). The vegetables we ordered with the main course never arrived. When telling us the dessert options the waitress spoke only to me, ignoring the people at the other end of the table (who also spoke Italian, so no excuse to not repeat the options to them). So, my job to memorise the menu and tell the others then… The atmosphere is really not nice: it is a covered outdoor seating area with plastic on one side to shield from road noise, which makes it stuffy and oppressively hot. There is one fan for the whole of the large area, so at most tables there is just no air movement at all. If you went out for a walk it was absolutely fine, so it’s really just how they’ve arranged the seating area. For the avoidance of doubt, the vast majority of our party speak native/fluent Italian so it’s not as if the staff couldn’t understand us or as if we were behaving like obnoxious foreigners (not that that’s an excuse for bad service). Our feeling was just that this was a downmarket sort of place that is perhaps being recommended to tourists by someone who is friends with the owner, but we would avoid it like the plague, especially if...

Food was mediocre at best and very disappointing. English menu writing is very unclear and made us feel a bit lost and we needed to count on the waiter to explain us the dishes, which he did very generally. We ordered for first the pumpkin ravioli and mushrooms sauce which was very bad, thick dough, very blunt pumpkin feeling and a cold mushrooms sliced on top. We also ordered the soup of the day, kind of Ribolita which was just ok and lacked depth. The place is specialized in bistecca alla fiorentina, but they only served it rare without any exceptions (we were with kids so we preferred it will be medium) , a bit weird but ok, we decided to go for it anyway. The steak was full of fat parts, much more than it should. In some parts we actually ate cold meat, seems the fire handling when cooking the meat was not done properly - what a shame! We had have much better steaks than that in Italy. Side dishes are nothing to talk about and the desert was kind of brownie cake with vanilla cream- basic but ok. Service was not attentive and...

I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone and I would not dine here again. Reservation for 4--we arrived on time and were greeted. We were seated in the plastic enclosed "patio", which was very noisy with crying toddlers and babies. There were children on scooters riding around other guests, and TWO DOGS who were eating from the tables at times. Our server was very snarky to us the entire time we were there. We ordered wine (difficult because not all the wine is available in full bottles and the pricing is not clear), appetizers and entrees. We waited for almost an hour for our food. In fact, we drank an entire bottle of wine and two bottles of water. Another group of 4 was seated the same time we were, and had finished their meal of steaks and lamb... and we were still waiting for our food! When our food arrived it was disappointing. It was not fresh, the taste was less than mediocre and the presentation was simply horrendous. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone and I would not...