Osteria Al 15 — Restaurant in Bologna

Update: Second visit broke my heart. Apparently only weekends are the chef present for dinner. Normally she comes in the morning and prepares the Ragu and such. But the dinner service is left to the line cooks

This means the standard of the food varies wildly. The food was really bad this time. The steak is the worst steak I've had in a while. even our previous favourite, the tiramisu, was nowhere near the world beater they were yesterday.

This would be 3 stars for everything if we based it on this visit.

It was so different from the previous day that we thought maybe it's our fault that we had flu and that affected our taste buds. But when we walked out we saw people with plates of unmistakably dry pasta, and that told us it's definitely them, not us that day

Come on weekend dinners only, to make sure the chef is there, and the food is of high quality as we experienced the first time

Original review: I hardly give out 5 stars. And even more rare is scoring 5 on all levels. But this place is insane

The service is so effortlessly charming, and they were so nice. From the start, they saw that we had our luggages, so they opened the restaurant earlier for us when we arrived early. Then, they were great in explaining everything, and patient in answering questions. They checked in on us and made us feel welcome without being overbearing at all, it just feels so natural. We really, really enjoyed the service and wanted to tip even though we never do, but they denied us from doing so.

The food is perhaps just as amazing. The pesto Modena was absolutely insane, a blast of flavour, and the same profile as your green pesto except much much better due to using pork lard instead of olive oil.

The tigella wasn't as good, quite dense. Squecquerone cheese was pleasant, very creamy like the interior of a burrata, with a tad of acidity, no stretchiness, and a hint of garlic aroma

Lasagna was really good, the top was well crusted which is rare, the pasta was pleasant, and the whole thing has a nice body, esp from the cream sauce composed of mozzarella and parmigiana. Meat flavour comes through as a hint, it's not very big chunks

Gramigna texture was great, Al dente without being overly hard, and the Ragu was full bodied. It's not a must try because a lot of places probably do it well in bologna, but it doesn't take away from how great this tastes, esp since outside of bologna not many places get this right

The tiramisu is simply the best I've had, and I've had a lot. It's life changing, I don't know what else to say, esp the cream. I'm told it's the quality of the mascarpone, but also it's very technical. Only small complaint is that the sponge is a little too moist, but the flavour was impeccable

Must try, I've only good things to say about this place. We are going back again...

One of the worst restaurant experiences in Europe. This place is off the beaten track and had really great reviews. I booked about 3 weeks in advance. Twice we tried to enter the restaurant and this person would just keep saying no no no to us. I tried to tell him we had reservations but it was quite a bad start. Finally when we managed to get in, the restaurant os definitely very cramped and there is barely any space. They have tried to go for a vintage vibe but everything looks dusty. Also, no one checked anyone's green pass which is required at the time we visited Bologna which was again a red flag. Not sure why they didn't do this and since they have fixed meal timings I saw everyone come in and not a single person was checked. Then begins the rest of it, we obviously spoke English which they knew while we were making the reservation however the server who was trying to serve us did not speak English at all and neither did the person who knew English try to help us. This wasn't a small or cheap restaurant by any means so I was quite surprised since we had by now already visited several places and didn't get this treatment.

Thus, I would definitely tell non Italian speakers to completely avoid this place.

Then we placed our orders and we ordered the appetisers and main course. The main course on the menu said vegetarian spaghetti and vegetarian lasagne which is what we ordered.

First for a place with fixed serving timing and seating times...the food topk forever to come! It was I think even longer than 40 to 45 minutes! Post that the server served me the spaghetti and my husband the lasagne. It looked funny to me and I did ask him if it is vegetarian. But I could smell some kind of meat. I asked him again and then he said they didn't have the vegetarian. I mean the server could have told me that to.begin with. So again took a while to finally get a vegetarian lasagne.

As for the food it is pricey and much better retsuatnts out there. It was not at all good. I barely had half and both me and my husband felt sick the whole day.

Now let me tell you the annoying thing right? After all thos terrible service, we just decided to leave after my husband ordered the tiramisu which was also very sub standard and I would recommend you eat somewhere else in Bologna.

They charged us 10 % service charge for such pathetic service!

So my opinion to everyone would be, if you are a visitor who is not from Italy! Give this place a miss! I completely regret having planned this meal and I just don't understand how this place is so highly rated. We visited numerous other places which were not the usual tourist haunts but...

We were one of the lucky ones. No reservations but we showed up 10 minutes before opening and were the third couple in line. Lucky enough to get an early table. No tables were available when we left! It was worth it! The (non-basil) pesto was a yummy new experience. Letting it sit on the warm bread to start to melt was a great game plan. The soft cheese was also a new experience for us, one that we would happily repeat! The scary part of the meal was everyone was ordering the Tagalatelli Bolognese and we opted for the lasagna, based on our servers recommendation. She was so right! It was made with the same ragu so we didn't miss out on that but the soft deliciousness of the pasta in at least 7 layers of lasagna was delectable. I mean it was so good I wanted to take a second piece home for tomorrow's breakfast. I really couldn't get enough! To end the meal, as we like to end all evenings, was to try their version of black cherry gelato. It was their special for the night and boy was it special. They put a black cherry luxardo style cherries in syrup on top that made it out of this world! Best cherry gelato we've ever had! Thanks for such a warm, wonderful and delicious introduction to...