Ristorante La Pesciera — Restaurant in Bari

Tourist Scam - Avoid This Place!

We found this restaurant through Google while searching for great seafood spots in Bari. With plenty of good reviews, we decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a huge mistake.

We ordered a grilled mix and risotto (Risotto al verde di basilico con tartare di branzino e bottarga). The first red flag was when the waiter, Gio/John from Mexico, insisted that they usually serve two plates of risotto (despite us ordering just one). I repeatedly asked if two plates meant just one dish and if we would only be charged for one. He assured us that was the case. Spoiler: they tried to charge us for two plates—we refused to pay.

The menu described the risotto as including tartar fish (raw), but since we had a pregnant woman in our group, we requested a substitution with something cooked. What they brought out was a dry, bland risotto with no sauce, salt, tomatoes, or anything resembling a proper dish. As a "tip from the chef," they provided three little packets of mayonnaise and suggested we put it on top, claiming it was a local Bari specialty.

I checked with local friends, and they confirmed our suspicions: this was a clear attempt to scam tourists. No Italian would ever put mayonnaise on risotto! And to top it off, they tried to charge us twice for that awful plate. Needless to say, we didn’t pay for it.

Terrible place, dishonest waiter, and awful food. Save yourself the trouble and find a better spot to enjoy...

Got the feeling tourists are not welcome here. We were staying in bari 15 minutes down then road from this restaurant. Saw the good reviews and was looking for a decent seafood place to have dinner. On arrival we were welcomed by a nice friendly waiter however then switched over to what seemed to be a more senior member of staff to serve us. The menu was in Italian so we asked for some help with the menu and after saying “grazie” to attempt some italian and our appreciation he walked off mimicking our attempts at the language in what seemed like anger and disgust. When the starters arrived they were not as expected but still enjoyable however when the main pasta dishes arrived we were not happy to say the least. I was served a dish that resembled charcoal crispy pasta that tasted like bonfire. The seafood on top was supposed to be gamberi but appeared to be a langoustine shell with no meat and a dry sauce. My mom also ordered a gamberi dish but different pasta dish and was also given prawn heads and no actual seafood meat in there. Pasta and shells of the shellfish. To charge minimum 18€ for that is disgusting. We did raise a complaint about it to the grumpy waiter but he tried to gaslight us to believe that we just misunderstand the dish and it is only meant to be “flavour of gamberi” from the shell and not actually gamberi in the dish. Incredible. Worst meal I had in Bari. I am sure by the other reviews for locals this place is wonderful but it you are a...

No, I would call this restaurant a little bit of an upscale place, but the menu is really poorly translated in English. There is no explanation given and the staff is really overwhelmed with all the tables that they are not very good at given explanations. So we had to really wonder and probably play guess on the menu as they were not very good at explaining what is what. Now with this said I would say that their food is very good quality and very fresh. I would say that their octopus is one of the best that I have eaten all over the world. The desserts that they have are also really good. Even though they brought the lemon sorbet almost melted, it was just like a soup. I'm not sure whether this is the way they serve it. Also, the service gets really bad when it's rush hour. We had to wait for about 20 minutes for them to bring the check because the waiter came to us with the machine to pay and he got distracted by two other tables just on the way to come to us. We also asked for some salt and I do know that most upscale places come with a very well seasoned food, but we asked three different waiters for sultan. They said one minute and nobody brought us salt and nobody even explained that they will probably not bring a salt. Maybe because they were very busy and it was a Saturday night. But after we paid everybody started looking at us a little bit with a disapproving face as if we had to pay and leave...