Hotel Sole Ristorante Pizzeria Bar Gelateria — Restaurant in Comunità Alto Garda e Ledro

Substandard food and extremely poor customer service. If I could have given less than 1 star I would have!

This visit to Hotel Sole Ristorante was an absolute shambles. Really disappointing after a previously great visit (many years ago). I don't know what has happened here but looking at other reviews we are not alone in our disappointment. I only wish I had read the reviews first!

Starters were fine, a little bland but nothing to get worked up about. I ordered the pasta with tomato sauce. This sauce tasted very much like a tin of plum tomatoes had been opened, mushed up and poured over the pasta. Lacked any sort of seasoning but edible.

My friend's meal on the other hand was horrendous. She ordered the Argentinian prawns with stir fried vegetables. As soon as the dish was set on the table, even I could tell there was something wrong. The colour of the prawns didn't look right, like they weren't quite fresh and the vegetables had all the life boiled out of them! The half potato on the plate was cold and hard. My friend tried to give the benefit of the doubt and took the head off one of the prawns only to find it was tough and overcooked. As a trained chef herself, she didn't want to risk eating prawns that weren't correctly cooked.

We called over the waiter to highlight that the prawns weren't properly cooked and an older waiter (maybe the Head Waiter as the others seemed to defer to him) came over and took the plate away. There was no apology, no explanation of what would happen next.

After a short while, the older waiter returned with the plate, shoving it into my friend's face, poking at the prawns and aggressively stating 'There is nothing wrong with the prawns. This is how we eat them here!'. This may work on most tourists, who may also get embarrassed by the scene being created but as I said, my friend is a trained chef. She reiterated that they weren't properly cooked and he practically shouted 'Well we serve 50 plates a day!'. I wonder how many plates are returned with food pushed around by tourists too uncomfortable to complain? This was certainly the experience of another guest at our hotel.

The attitude of this waiter was quite frankly shocking and put a very abrupt end to our evening. We absolutely refused to pay for the prawns but gave our initial waiter a tip as our poor experience was in no way his fault and he looked extremely embarrassed by the whole incident.

Avoid...

Arriving late (8pm) tea on the first night is from a reduced menu, it's good but not so if your veggie or vegan. The second night as asked for veggie options ( seemed very difficult to be vegan here and to be fair all the restaurants in the area) and was told the menu would cater. It was better but the only main meal that didn't have meat was omelette, after a few nights I had words again and the head waiter agreed to help and every night he asked me what I wanted and it was really good. So it ended really well. Breakfast was buffet and very good (slight problem with small birds ) but the view of the lake was fantastic. The rooms are comfortable but the ones on the back of the hotel have a noisy air duct from the kitchen but you soon get used to it and it turns off at 11 pm. The staff were friendly and helpful. Ask about the guest card / app that gives discount on services and attractions nearby. There is a lively square just outside the hotel it's really busy in the evening but not too noisy. I would...

This is a very unfriendly restaurant, although the location of this restaurant is good, near the lake. An older waiter in the restaurant had a very bad attitude, inpatient, no smile at all, and kept us waiting for a long time to take our order, he didn’t even look at you. When talking. The taste of the food was poor and we waited a long time, we ordered 2 iced coffees, he didn't give us spoon, when we entered the restaurant and asked for 2 spoons, they only gave one. There was a nice young waiter and a young waitress in the restaurant, we tried to ask them for the bill but they were not allowed to take money. So we had to wait for a long time for the older waiter with a bad attitude to give us the bill. It's a pity that these two nice young waiters have to work in such a poor restaurant. We should have read the reviews before going to this restaurant, the bad reviews here...