Rino — Restaurant in Como

We had a reservation for 8:30 pm. A thunderstorm had delayed several customers, which clearly threw the team into disarray. I can understand that the welcome was a bit rushed.

However, the rest of the evening was a disaster:

• Menus: after 15 minutes with nothing, we were told there weren’t enough menus and we’d have to wait. It took over 30 minutes before just getting the menu. But it was ok, it was rush time, we understand

• Service: the main dishes arrived at… 10:30 pm. In the meantime, one waitress spilled a glass of red wine on my shirt, my phone, and me. She barely mumbled an apology and made no further effort — no extra apology when I returned from cleaning up, no smile, nothing. She remained cold and frozen for the rest of the evening, as if nothing had happened. The only “gesture” was to refill the glass she had spilled. The table on the left were French people like us and when they left they told us goodbye which was more like good luck!

• Organization: no knife for my main course, and we had to ask for absolutely everything (oil, salt, pepper…). The tables around us stayed dirty for over an hour after customers had left.

• Food: the food is good except for my husband’s meat which was good but came on its own, topped with a strip of bacon and accompanied by a bland sauce (a sort of pesto with rosemary). After all this wait and everything that happened since we got there he just wanted to leave.

In short: endless waiting, clumsy mistakes with no accountability, a complete lack of warmth or professionalism (not from everyone - two were nice but just busy which we get), and zero attention to the customer. A shame, because the kitchen seemed to...

We were excited to try this place after so many positive reviews. And firstly, the one waitress was working extremely hard, but as a result looked like she would have preferred to be just about anywhere else. Anyway, 20 minutes to get a menu. 40 minutes to get a wine list and 45 minutes to get some bread on the table. All only after asking too. The two mains we ordered we were told both had key ingredients missing due to a rain shortage. Kinda key when it’s supposed to be a Tuscan restaurant. Why not tell us that when you give us the menus? We would have left right then. The replacements sounded fine but were substandard. The steak was fine, but the nondescript replacement ravioli was one of the most forgettable I’ve had in many trips to Italy. And the tomato and onion salad (2 ingredients, so we figured would be hard to mess up) was terrible - tomatoes that looked like they were grown in the North Pole and drowned by too much onion. If the staff had asked me how my night was I would have told them. But they didn’t. So I’m saying it here. And I look forward to the staff’s reply trying to fact check as they seen to do with...

Pros Some of the food was very tasty, the octopus and the parma ham appetizers were both very tasty.

Cons As some of the other reviews have suggested the service was really slow, my wife and I arrived at 7:40pm and it took 2hrs 30m to complete a two course dinner. It took 30mins after sitting down to get a menu and an 60mins for our appetizers.

The staff were very busy and unfortunately they never came to offer another glass of water or wine.

For our main course we ordered the bistecca steak to share. We asked for medium rare and parts of it were cooked perfectly and other parts were very rare bordering on blue (see attached photo). The staff were happy to put the undercooked pieces back on the grill however for a $120 steak I’d expect it to be perfectly cooked.

When we ordered the steak the waitress mentioned the steak would be 1.2kg - 1.4kg in weight however about 10mins before they brought it out they told us it’d be 1.6kg. Just a heads up that you should probably check the weight before you confirm the order.

I really wanted to like this place but the service and food just didn’t meet our...