Tavern da Michele — Restaurant in Bari

So sad for this experience, the restaurant was great looking but the service is so rude .. first of all.. we called to book a table and they told us “yes, you can come” .. when we arrived we had a little bit of waiting to sit but that was okay.. after we sitted we were waiting for 40 minutes for someone to come to take our order . We were asking if its possible to order and they were looking at us with ignorance without answering to our request (which was to order) .. when they finally came he asked us if we want the menu ( we were waiting for 40 minutes without him knowing if we waiting for the menu or to order) after we told him that we are ready, we asked for a pizza ( ps the menu was a 2 page menu in which the first page was with pizzas and the second one was with antipasti, main course and beverages) .. as soon as i say the name of the pizza he take a nervous deep breath and answers “ no pizza” nodding his head .. i looked at him and i said “excuse me ?” Looking like wondering maybe i was looking at the wrong menu .. then he answered “ we don’t have chef for pizza” and then he left moving his hands of anger . He didn’t even asked if we wanted anything else (which we wanted 2 more main courses and one appetiser) .. the sad part is that locals do suggest this restaurant, i dont know if our experience has to do with the fact that we were tourists. Either way even with that maybe racist behaviour (because we were the only tourist table that had this treatment) i don’t recommend this restaurant not only to tourists but also to locals. I dont think that this type of restaurants should exist…. I could say that maybe this was just a bad day but as i see from other reviews i see that this type of experience happened to other...

Good food, but bad service and bad attitude. Went there for dinner with a large group and our server had the most awful and aggressive attitude showing no customer service oriented behavior. He started by asking us what we would like to drink and somehow he expected all of us would want wine. When it was my turn to say what I would like to drink, I asked if they had limoncello spritz. When he heard limoncello he snapped and it was like he expected me to ask also for wine. He stopped getting the drinks order from the other guests from the table and proceeded to make my limoncello all while grunting and slamming the bottles. When he returned there were also other people from the group who wanted to drink something else, not wine, and again he stopped and went for those drinks slamming and grunting. Next when he returned to take our food orders, again showed a very aggressive attitude if we didn’t coordinate ourselves to count how many similar dishes we want. I must say this this behavior is unacceptable when you work in any kind of customer service. If you don’t have the necessary experience in taking large orders, don’t blame the customer or expect the customer to order when you want and what you want. Needless to say we were all shocked about this behavior and what was supposed to be a nice dinner at the end of our vacation, was transformed in a tense situation which affected negatively the overall mood. I can understand if someone has a bad day, or if they feel frustrated because they didn’t speak english, but this is not customer’s fault. I offered 2 stars because the food was good. Otherwise I would have given...

The best meal we had in Bari! From the moment we walked in we knew it was going to be good. Beautiful restaurant and welcoming staff. We started with the arancini which were delicious. Then we both ordered the tagliatelle polpo ragout (I am so sorry - I did not actually catch the name of this dish - I pointed to a photo from Google reviews of what we (Australians) would call squid ink pasta) - see two photos below. This was INCREDIBLE. One of the best pastas we had in our three-week tour of Italy - if not the best - and we are not easy to please. We also really enjoyed the house red wine - €6 per half litre, and the main of calamari and side of roasted vegetables. I didn’t try the calamari because I was too full but my partner was very complimentary and I devoured the roast eggplant, zucchini and capsicum. Thanks very much to our host whose name I didn’t catch. She spoke English very well (our Italian is very limited/non-existent) and also noted she spoke French to the couple behind us. I highly recommend this restaurant over the more touristy places in the old-town. Hope to be back some day. Prices also very affordable - less than €70 for two bottles of sparkling water, 1L of house wine, arancini entree, two seafood pastas, a shared main of calamari, large side of grilled vegetables and €2 pp cover charge....