Ciauru i mari — Restaurant in Catania

Horrible food and service could be better. We have booked a table in advance just to secure a nice table, but when we arrived we got a outdoor table in the corner with the entrance, which was disappointing!

When we got to ordering food, we didn’t get any recommendations or any reactions to what we have ordered. Writing this because the food we got was HORRIBLE! We had to try and eat because we were super hungry, and understood that Saturday night you could struggle getting anywhere with a nice meal.

Its our last Saturday night is Sicily and this dinner has ruined the whole evening for us. We have notified our waiter about our food, to which we didnt get any reply before we got to ask another waiter for our bill.. and all we got was a offer of a limoncello shot on the house, i know its a poor type of service and a bad solution for when you are serving a bad meal..

The Veal we ordered was flavorless and tasted lukewarm plastic also same goes for seafood salad! All the mussels gave me a bad aftertaste and i felt like i had to vomit after each try! The octopus was so chewy i didnt knew if i should have thrown it away or whatever…

Anyways i could point out all the bad things forever here, but if you go here for first time and you only read the reviews, please ask your waiter whatever they recommend to eat, or you will risk disappointing yourself:)

Personal opinion and experience, which was horrible. We wont coke back here thats for sure, had much better seafood salad about 2km away from same spot, and my partner had same order with the Veal with the Pecorino or parmesan cheese (even tho he doesn’t like any strong cheese), said the meat...

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the previous review made by the person who dined there the same day as I did (sort the reviews by newest). I went there around 10:30 PM, near the closing time. Service was exceptional. I started with the swordfish rolls. The pasta nonna was better. Wine was great. I left a tip, brought back the leftovers. After about 30 minutes I got very sick. I was so violently ill, one of the worst ever in all of my travels. I searched on Google and found what is called scombroid food poisoning caused by improperly stored or handled fish. Symptoms start 10-60 minutes after consuming. I believe the cause was the swordfish rolls because it was served so quickly after I ordered it. It took less than 10 minutes for the dish to come out. I was surprised because I would think it would take longer to make; they are stuffed and then deep-fried, so they were probably prepared in advance. Of course, I can't be 100% sure that was the cause, but I would not be writing this review if I did not sincerely think that was the reason. It's been a several hours now, 3:30 AM, and I feel better, but I had all of the symptoms described: gastrointestinal, flushing, tingling. Maybe it was just a bad day given all of the positive reviews. Or it could be something else that caused me to get sick. But I did not eat anywhere else after or anytime before that was close to the time I got sick. I thought very carefully about writing this review. In any case I threw away...

The brown pulp on top of the linguine, was all the sea urchin that was in the dish and the sauce did not taste of sea urchin but an unspecified taste of seafood. You should either reduce the amount of pasta or increase the amount of sea urchin. You can tell from the colour of the sea urchin that it is not fresh, at all. The couple next to me were complaining that the seafood pasta had little seafood and a large chunk of oily pasta; they left most of the dish uneaten. The sword fish rolls (involtini di pesce spada) had a distinct rancid taste, possibly due to old pine nuts in the filling gone rancid. The restaurant didn’t acknowledge this, unsurprisingly. The anchovies in the pasta (pennette alla cantanese) didn’t seem fresh. The swordfish all’eoliana was right on point and succulent. Thank you. The grilled vegetables were tough and unseasoned, and not very interesting to eat. All right selection of local wines and some members of staff are knowledgable on the wines, though that doesn’t hold back those members with apparently no knowledge from giving recommendations. The atmosphere is very nice, but somewhat ruined by the loud 80’ies pop music blasting out next door. They forgot our orders 4(!) times. Yes. Overall, Ciauru i Mari deserves 3 stars only because the average level in central Cantania is...