La Bul — Restaurant in Bari

The five of us dined here on Friday evening, the 26th. We were seated in the enclosed patio at the back of the restaurant which was rather hot because it is not ventilated in any way. I find it quite difficult dining in 27-28 degrees without even a fan cooling us off. The interior dinning room was empty, but there was no AC on. The menu had three choices of multi-course menus, 4, 5 and 8. But none of them listed a choice of dishes, meaning you would not know what will be served. This is highly unusual in my experience. Sure, one could be the “chef’s choice menu” but the other ones should give you some choices, such as a fish or meat main course. So, we ordered from the a-la-carte menu. Service overall was very slow, even though only 3-4 tables were occupied. It was in particular difficult to have them serve us the white and red wines that we had ordered and some of us often sat there with empty glasses while food was in front of us. Since you leave bottles of water at the table, you might as well leave the bottles of wine there as well if you are unable to serve it appropriately along with the food. Everyone but myself ordered just a main while I also had the smoked fish appetizer. It was good, maybe a bit heavy on the smoke. Two of us had the seafood risotto. There didn’t appear to be any pieces of fish or shrimp in the red sauce that the rice was cooked in. It was very salty and tasted entirely of a stock made by boiling the shells of shrimp. So, basically not edible and a cheap approach to making a fish stock. They replaced those two servings with a fish dish that was agreeable. One of us had the duck dish which was fine, even though the duck was over-cooked. I had the veal sweetbreads which tasted rather strongly, so, maybe not from veal but an older cow. And I have had sweetbreads on many occasions, so, I know the difference. So, don’t be fooled by the Michelin recommendation. This restaurant doesn’t live up to it...

Made the mistake of ordering the 7-course tasting menu and the 5-course wine pairing. TL;DR - order a la carte and a bottle of wine. The kitchen can produce good food but don’t challenge it/expect Michelin-quality service.

The cured fish amuse bouche was excellent. The next two courses were very similar — raw fish and raw mushrooms. The cooked fish course was excellent.

Then the service started to break down. Wine would show up with no matching course. Eventually the lamb dish arrived and it was very good. Then a loooong wait for the dessert course that turned out to be two scoops of pistachio ice cream. Good ice cream, but why did we have to wait so long for someone to put it in a bowl? And the dessert wine was completely MIA; we had to remind someone to serve it to us long after the dessert course was cleared.

This restaurant feels like it’s reaching for a Michelin star, but nobody acknowledged the service failures — which suggests they don’t have the self-awareness to reach...

We recently dined at La Bul but unfortunately, the overall dining experience left much to be desired. The service was slow and not as attentive as one would expect from a restaurant of this caliber. We were rushed through the specials menu even tho we asked the waiter to repeat and still didn’t understand what they offer. Moreover, the presentation of the dishes was lackluster and failed to live up to the expectations set by the restaurant's status. While the dishes sounded great on paper, they lacked the refinement and creativity that one would expect from a high-end restaurant. Additionally, the flavors of the food were underwhelming and did not leave a lasting impression. Overall, the food was mediocre and fell short of what one would expect. Despite these shortcomings, I must commend the restaurant for their wine selection, which was the highlight of...