Risto Bar & Gelateria Cristallo — Restaurant in Desenzano del Garda

Our American family of four loved this spot. Location is perfect, prices are fair, and the food was fantastic. We’ve spent many days in Italy (more than the average tourist) and have been all over Italy. We just came from Liguria and ordered the trofie pasta with pesto.. it was just as good as it is there. Actually we loved it best!! Even more than the six varieties of pesto pasta we had in Chiavari, Cinque Terre, etc. The Tiramisu blew our minds though. Soooo good! My little boy liked the burger (but the french fries needed salt). The paninis were also delicious.. and very cheap! Spritzes actually had alcohol in them, and we were quite pleased. We will probably be back tomorrow!...

We went there since the prices were low. Great surroundings, nice view and those are only advantages of this place. We’ve taken Margharita and Ragu. Pizza with ok dough, but sauce was just a sour polpa without any other flavour, old gummy cheese and lots of grease, but from what? When it comes to Ragu, it was terrible experience, small portion but pasta ok. Ragu itself didn’t have any taste whatsoever, meat was pale and indistinguishable in this meal. You also receive lots of Parmesan(?) on side. That didn’t help also, because the Parmesan hasn’t tasted like Parmesan in there. To sum this up, everything almost without a taste....

AVOID, AVOID, AVOID...

1, Pasta not fresh and microwaved 2, Pizza was like it was bought from Aldi 3, Staff kept coming over to see how much food we had left on our plate, so we felt rushed to finish, especially when they turned all the bar lights off and music too.

We argued the final bill and got €20 knocked off which was the price of the wine that I had to rush to drink. They were happy to take whatever we offered just to get us out the door.

Please avoid this restaurant and go to the restaurant next door that sits on the corner overlooking the lake which was just lovely food...