Hosteria Ganino — Restaurant in Florence

I’ll start out by saying that the food was mostly delicious. We had a bit of an unfortunate experience where we waited close to an hour and a half to be served. The waitress was kind and sweet and clearly working hard running around the entire night, but she didn’t exactly communicate what was going on to us or initiate an apology until we said something.

We started out with wine and ordered our food within 10 minutes of sitting down. We were enjoying our wine until we realized it had been quite some time since we ordered. The waitress saw us sitting there and brought us bread, at which point it was 45 minutes or so after we had initially sat down, without saying a word. The bread was cold and dry. No olive oil or anything to go with it. We continued to watch everyone else who got seated well after us get their food. Eventually it was close to 1.5 hours after being seated and we asked what was going on and all we got was “sorry it’s coming.” Another 10 minutes or so our pasta course came out. Was absolutely delicious (we got the tagelatelli with boar ragu), we then sat there another 15ish minutes waiting for our florentine steak we had initially ordered. Eventually we confronted the waitress asking what was going on. Very bluntly asked why everyone who has gotten seated after us was being served before us. She then started apologizing profusely saying that the line cook missed our pasta order and it set everything behind for us. She was nice about it and we felt bad but also like… it’s about 2 hours after being seated and we had only just gotten our pasta dish.. mind you we are fairly laid back diners. We don’t have overly high expectations or demands, more so just looking for normal dining experiences. At this point we were a little fed up. Our steak came out and it was good. I don’t think it “wow’d” either of us but we did enjoy it. This was both of our first times ever trying florentine steak so we can’t compare it to anything else really.

Overall we were really excited for this restaurant and our experience was unfortunately tainted by relatively bad service. We were planning on ordering dessert but at that point just couldn’t imaging sitting...

The bruschetta was toast with chopped tomatoes, two with basil, two without, no spices, no olive oil. Flavorless and 9 euro. We ordered the special- a Tuscan soup, with no flavor except butter greens. It had sat under the warming light so long, the parsley garnish looked as if it had been through a California wild fire. While I am accustomed to long waits in Italian restaurants, one could have birthed a baby, christened him or her and enrolled the child in kindergarten in the meantime. I had to wave down the waitress to get wine. (Who has to ask for wine in Italy, other than what type?) The wine was an inexpensive Chianti, that had decent flavor - it was the highlight of the meal. Once we ordered, roughly 45 minutes passed with no food forthcoming. We flagged down our waitress who was in I'll humor from the moment we were seated. Apparently we were interrupting her social life as she spent the majority of her time on her phone, with in eye sight. Two dishes were identical- one with ricotta as advertised and one without. Oddly enough, the one without came whilst the one with ricotta never showed up. We finally waved it off as one of us was nearly a year older. We asked for the bill which took another 20 minutes. Finally, the manager came with the bill asking how was our experience. He did not seem shocked when we said it was awful. In 20 years of experience, eating in Italy this was one of our worst. Most of which was due to the waitress. Don't waste your time or money...

We reserved through their website but the website does not explain their protocol. If you want to sit outsides or indoors specify you apparently need to call. Further, they state that reservations are not solidified until confirmed but do not confirm or tell you the protocol to confirm. Food is above average but not particularly creative and their inconsistent service distracts from the experience. As Americans that have worked in the food service industry we understand that running a restaurant is difficult. But this place would benefit from better business practices & policies. We felt that they did not care about our reservation struggles. That is okay but what they don’t realize is their poor business practices actually distract from a persons experience We realize that many may see Americans as stupid and demanding. I now see that the proprietors of this restaurant do not care enough about service, their culinary art and making someone’s experience memorable. It was disappointing and I couldn’t care less about the cost of anything, I just want respect and consideration. Inside ambience is tight and...