Osteria Tabarchina — Restaurant in Cagliari

What a shame you can't rate a restaurant with zero stars. We ordered the spaghetti carbonara and the Carbonara di Mare. It started with dry old bread without any dip. They didn't charge for it, but they should just skip it if such lousy bread is going to be served. The main dishes came; the Carbonara tasted like absolutely nothing, a prepared supermarket Carbonara is a gourmet meal compared to what we have been served. No salt, no sauce, and a non-existent guanciale (or bacon), the very few pieces were cut in microscopic squares. But if you think it can't be worse, the chef proved us wrong with the carbonara di mare. You would expect seafood dishes to taste like seafood, of course- but this pasta was invaded by the fish flavor. Not one ounce of pasta was left to be tasted. It was supposed to be a la carbonara as well, so you can already tell by the previous dish what was served. It had empty shells of shrimps in it, and I guess the seafood wasn't bought this decade as well. Totally inedible. Since it was our last night in Cagliari, we didn't want this to ruin the experience, so we just asked for the check so we could pay and have dinner somewhere else. After we asked for the bill without eating anything of our pasta, the waitress almost screamed at us why we wouldn't like the food. Like we had to apologize for not wanting to eat their "food". When we walked to the counter to pay with card, the chef also approached us and looked at us silently with a face - like he ate nothing but his own food for the last year. We felt forced to explain ourselves and apologize for wanting to leave. We had a 60€ bill, and no more than two bites were eaten. Nobody tasted the food, nobody apologized, nobody offered to re-do the dish or something complementary. We didn't ask for a refund or anything, BUT something minimum as an apology would have been nice. So all in all, the worst experience at a restaurant we ever had. The wine was...

we had dinner here almost every night as part of a school trip.

for full disclosure, we each paid £15 (~€17.5) per night per person for 5 nights and there were around 30 of us.

the poor quality of food became a running joke as we came to italy expecting delicious food. it was especially frustrating as well as we could see food being served to the other people in the restaurant looking edible and even delicious.

on top of that, the food took forever to arrive to us. every time we would ask for more water or cheese for pasta, it would either take a eon for the waiter to get it to us or we would have to ask multiple times.

on some nights, we were also served jugs of wine or rose. we were initially excited for this as we hoped that the drinks would provide respite for the onslaught on our tastebuds from the food but that was not the case. the drinks, if you can believe it, was even worse than the food. i personally took a zip and switched back from water, the only stomach-able substance from this restaurant.

our last supper at this restaurant was the highlight of our culinary journey here. for starters, we had bottarga and mussels pasta which was actually nice. however, the main was the most revolting thing i’ve had from this place (see: spinach omelette with cauliflower). i could physically endure the food thus far. i could not take a single bite of this. for this meal, my friend got the vegetarian pasta as as a lovely surprise, the restaurant experimented with some avant-garde seasoning and generously included a piece of hair in it!

all in all, you would probably get a better experience from this place than we did as their actual menu looked quite good but since we were university students that have pre-paid and definitely will not come back, the chef took inspiration for our meals from the...

Attracted in by a polite hostess, all other restaurants were full so we took a chance. Tremendous mistake as this is an absolute tourist trap. Soggy over oiled calamari and tuna. Sea bass was ok but over salted. The icing on the cake was when they said “you must pay the bill inside”, the owner did not realise that another waiter had given me the bill for 73 euro. When I went inside the owner casually tried to charge 103 euros to my card. When I showed him my bill he acted surprised and ran outside to talk to the waiter. Initially I thought perhaps he mixed up the bill, but on reflection I realise he instructs the staff not to bring the bill to the table , and charges you what he can get away with- I presume the fact that my partner and I were wearing Rolexes he though he could scam 103 euro minimum. Absolute criminal enterprise. Always check your bill and google reviews in Sardinia- beautiful island but the pirate...