Ristorante C'Era Una Volta — Restaurant in Bologna

Response to the owner's response to my original review: You can blame my bad review on being an American and how Americans are terrible tourists and I agree with you. I can't speak Italian and I will never understand or fully experience what Italian food means to an Italian born person. I agree with you. I still love your country, your culture and your food. And I do respect it greatly. At the end of the day, I ate the same dish across the street at Vicolo Colombina and it was absolutely amazing. So is it me, or is it your food? You can tell me to respect your craft, but at the end of the day you served me and my wife cold, tasteless food that wasn't prepared fresh. Did you think I wouldn't notice? I do respect the craft of working in the restaurant industry. Your waiters deserve praise, they were delightful, funny and kind. I could have told them how we couldn't finish the meal and left unsatisfied, but based on how you are responding to me here, I think you would have been even more rude and dismissive to your own employees.

Original Review: I used to have this theory that there were no bad Italian restaurants in Italy. I was wrong.

No restaurant this close to Quadrilatero should be this bad. To be fair, we didn’t have a reservation, we were tired from travel and we took a shot. We were let down. No restaurant in Bologna should be serving cold, bland Tagliatelle al Ragù. For the benefit of the doubt we fell for an absolute tourist trap, Olive-Garden-esque offering of a “trio” of Bologna classics: Tagliatelle, Tortelloni and Lasagna. That’s on us. Our shame. But damn, we were tired and we hoped for a good meal. This food tasted like it was sloped on our plate from a buffet line at a cafeteria. We couldn’t finish our food, paid and just left. No, we didn't say anything because we were embarassed. I feel bad about that.

I’ve been debating leaving a bad review, because I hate leaving bad reviews. The service was really excellent. 10/10. They don’t deserve this review and I’m sorry. But the food was so bad, I thought I misread the instructions on my microwave entree. In 10 years of traveling to Italy and enjoying life-changing meals, this...

The restaurant is located near Piazza Maggiore, it is clean and quite nice, but a bit impersonal and "cold". The service was not bad, but it was still missing something to be perfect. As a treat, I received a basket with focaccia and small pastries, but everything was dry, at least a day old. As a starter, I ordered tartare with parmesan chips, the meat was a bit stale, oxidized, more or less fresh, the parmesan chips were not fresh, they were cold, taken out of the fridge pre-prepared. There was no pastry with the meal, which I missed. As a main course, I had wholemeal spaghetti with shrimp, the food was quite good but the portion was small for the price. Overall, I rate the visit to the restaurant as quite good, but they have room for...

GOOD FOOD EXCELLENT PLACE GREAT SERVICE

The food was very good and the service more than excellent: I was the only vegan in a grouo of four and the waiter offered me an amazing alternative to their risotto, so that I wasn't "forced" to eat the usual pasta al pomodoro (which is always good but it's the kind of thing you get when you go to a restaurant where they don't even know what a vegan is) and he also asked the chef if it was possible to make a vegan dessert. They reinvented one of their already existing recipe and made me a chestnut cannolo. I really appreciated that and couldn't stop...