Osteria alla Piazza — Restaurant in Castellina in Chianti

Fantastic dining experience. It's easy for restaurants to get away with merely mediocre food and service in isolated/touristy regions, but osteria alla piazza transcended the tourist trap routine. It has beautiful views from both its outdoor patio and indoor dining room of the rolling tuscany hills before you.

The staff was very friendly and prompt with water, wine and food service.

The antipasti of aubergine flan with fresh truffles was delicious and smooth. Maybe a little heavy on the shaved truffles. The baked pear with pancetta was refreshing and also very tasty. Both were well portioned for a starter size. The primi of risotto with fresh asparagus and bacon was amongst the best dishes I've had in Italy. The asparagus was clearly fresh and well prepared, while the risotto itself was rich and hearty without being heavy. The paparadelle with wild boar was of typical Tuscan cuisine and well made. Pasta noodles were not soggy nor undercooked and the boar meat flavoured wonderfully. For the secondi we split a platter of deep fried meats and vegetables and it was well seasoned, not greasy but still crunchy with a wonderful mix of vegetables.

The wine list was good and they had desserts that we were too full to sample. Price was extremely reasonable for the quality of the food, location...

Overall disappointing. A nice location with okay food but with very disappointing service for what was not a cheap meal. We went for lunch and considering the other stunning restaurants in the area we visited, I would take your custom elsewhere.

To pick up on one part of the poor service: very difficult to get the attention of a waiter, after getting the menus we waited for 20 minutes without a visit to the table, when we finally ordered we got a round of aperitifs, 20 minutes go by and our starters arrive (no aperitifs yet), enquire as to where they are, told they are on their way. Another 10 minutes, enquire again, and clearly the order has been forgotten as they have no idea about it (understandable, I appreciate mistakes happen) - but no apology/acknowledgement just that it's coming a few more minutes. It doesn't take 30 minutes to make a campari soda and I would have thought a restaurant should understand an aperitif comes before (at least with) the food.

Starters were nice, including the cevice and buratta - but the pasta was really average, we had the ragu, truffle and mushroom.

Having been to this part of tuscany a few times before, this was sadly our least enjoyable restaurant experience! Don't waste your time, so many other...

After a long drive through the mountains we, me and my girlfriends family, were longing for a drink. We ran into "Osteria alla Piazza". It looked closed, because there were no guests, but eventually we saw and older man and a young girl. We stopped the car and went to the Osteria. The older man stopped us at the entrance and rejected us, when we told him we wanted to drink something. We experienced it as pretty rude and asked why. The rude man told us in terrible English: "It is restaurant". Pretty strange because the name of the place starts with "Osteria". The man told us: "Only eat". So we left the empty OSTERIA, where no people were sitting, because...