Trattoria del Moro — Restaurant in Bolsena

Years ago, I visited this restaurant and loved everything about it. Much has changed since. I was here with my family yesterday, and everything was somewhere between disappointing and outright abhorrent.

Starting with the menu itself - instead of a proper card, this restaurant hands you a QR-Code that sends you to their website, where you are then "free" to explore the menu. If you are looking for a place to visit with someone of a... "digitally challenged" generation, or simply enjoy a proper menu that is convenient to peruse, this place isn't for you.

But surely the food is worth the effort, right? Nope...

The tre crudi di lago were one and all bland and chewy, the few spits of sauce they actually dained to garnish the fishcubes with providing little remedy.

The portion of bruschetta with the L'Italiano was less than sparing, and while the ham, sausage and cheese weren't bad, (duh, we are in italy), the bread was so disgustingly bland and dry that it sucked all the flavour out of this antipasti.

The puzzle di pesce... Well now. For 19 Euros, you get an assortment of... nothing. Of the maybe ten dishes on this plate, two are just half a marinated shrimp. The other portions are, for the most part, no bigger and no less bland - with the exception of a decent portion of chewy octopus salad and a portion of even chewier tuna in curry sauce with a surprise side of plastic.

Lastly, as far as the Antipasti go, the carpaccio di coregone... This same restaurant taught me, years ago, to love good fish carpaccio. Few things have ever overjoyed me as much as finding a sword fish carpaccio in the Cafe Hackescher Hof in Berlin - for good fish carpaccio truly is a rarity in germany. Now, back at the place were it all started, I had to find that their new cook doesn't seem to know what carpaccio even is. My vendace was neither raw, nor thinly sliced - for 15 euros, I was served the italian equivalent to herring fillet in curry sauce, which I can get anywhere in germany for less than a euro and in no lesser quality out of a can. Mind you, as opposed to some other dishes which 'graced' our table, this one was at least edible.

Now, for the main courses. Let's start with the best - the L'amatriciana was decent. The noodles were a bit chewy (haven't seen an italian fail at al dente before, but ok), and making the sauce with pancetta instead of guanciale is just cheap and lazy, but it was decent enough, taste-wise.

The Costolette di Agnello less so - the (tiny) portion of potatoe-based side really wasn't half bad - but the rack of lamb was neither porperly trimmed nor grilled - it was fatty, chewy, and certainly not medium.

It gets worse, though. My fathers grigliata di pesce, his second course, was perpared far too early, and we saw it standing around for about ten minutes while we were finishing our antipasti, wondering who it might belong to - surely they wouldn't dare serve us a long-cold plate? Wrong again! These cretins actually had the gall, the sheer audacity to do just that. It's hard to say wether it would have been good otherwise - the flabby, uninspired fish certainly didn't suggest so.

And finally, for their biggest atrocity, the gnocchi con aragostelle. Lobster, here, should be put in quotation marks - what you really get is two tiny, less than shrimp-sized things which you have to pry out of their hard, slippery shells with a lot of effort for very little reward - a reward which is then ruined entirely by the disgustingly over-salted tomatoe sauce.

(Here used to be a section praising the excellent wine selection, but since the owner decided to insult me, I shall set things straight)

Ad hominems and libellous lies seem to be all that you have in defense of your terrible service. Though in broken italian, I was nothing but polite to your staff - and that you are lying is obvious to everyone. You do not know who I am. How could you? I certainly didn't give you my name, much less my alias on google. To hell with you, you split-tongued clown, and may your restaurant sink to the bottom of the lake...

We booked for my sons birthday , four adults familiar with Italian cuisine. We arrived on time at 8.00. The restaurant waitress took our drinks order and it arrived quickly. We then sat and waited. Other tables began to fill up. Eventually a waiter (no doubt the manager) took our order which we had selected from the online app. Not the best for some people. The wine was delicious and not over priced. We again waited a good twenty mins receiving our starters at about 8.50. Many other tables were filled and the restaurant was BUSY! Service with drinks was quick but with food we could see plated food leaving to be served and guests had not finished starters so food either 'sat' or was returned to the kitchen. My son ordered mussels a huge portion but overcooked!!!! My husband and I orfeted Corleone cream. Well it was a surprise. Served elegantly but it was basically a fish mousse or light pate, a healthy portion. No crackers or crispbreafs no salad with it to cut through the richness so we left at least half of the portion. Our DIL ordered of mackerel. This was not what arrived. The Eng translation said a fillet which is what arrived but it wasnt pleasant to eat far too heavy. For our mains my son had the grilled fish prawns etc delicipus well cooked a huge tasty portion. We had lake fish a mix of perch latirini whitebait etc. We had side salads made of lettuce grated carrot and toms undwrwhelming really. A huge portion of fish but a grey mountain that was not hot and it was clearly cooked to death and had been left standing due to the pressure on the kitchen. The quite full plates were collected and no waiter commented at all which was surprising. We waited to be asked about coffee and dessert. No one ever came. The whole evening we watched plates of food ready to eat being returned to the kitchen as starters were not finished by customers. Also customers were waiting long periods of time for their orders to be taken. Overall a disappointing evening, poor food quality but the waiters worked their socks off to cover...

Unfortunately, we did not get a good service here and could not recommend this place: we were seated in the shadow to an outside seating despite there were tables on the sun available and later some places on the molo part which was a warmer place (this was in February). Then we were waiting around 40 minutes to get some part of our food: some of us received starters, some 2nd course food (however we all ordered both courses). The waiters were not nice at all, not really reacting to our request (maybe they did not understand English... but anyway that was not so professional behaviour. Also, I believe, they would forget part of our foods if we were not asking for it from time to time. They were occupied with some friends coming over and other guests. The food was swimming in too much oil, the seafood salad was quite without taste and the fish was oversalted. However the lasagna was quite good. They did not offer any bread or any side dish and at the end we just gave up to ask anything...so we were freezing with below average food with unfriendly staff - not a nice experience of...