La Giostra — Restaurant in Florence

We frequently visit Florence (2-3+ times per year), and have been trying to revisit La Giostra for some. The restaurant is very popular and we were finally able to get a late reservation (9:45 p.m.) on a Friday night.

Item to note, I had to enter my credit card information at the time of reservation and told would be charged 50 euro per person in case of no show/last minute cancellation.

We arrived on time for our reservation and were told there would be “a bit of a wait” for a table. Significant understatement. We were not seated until 11:30 p.m. An offered only one glass of prosecco (in addition to the first glass ordered and paid for) and a small portion of crostini.

Before you ask yourself, “why would you wait so long to be seated for a table?” I have three points to note: 1. We would have no other alternative place to have dinner at that late hour; 2. We had thoroughly enjoyed our last experience in 2017 and 3. We felt held hostage by the 100 euro we would be charged upon leaving.

After such a long wait, it was difficult to have any appetite left for dinner at 11:30 p.m.. We ordered only a pasta course, which was very delicious. We were done with our mains ~ 12:30 a.m. when a server asked about our experience. When we complained about the significant delay, the server asked if we would want some limoncello in consideration, to which we refused and asked the server to ask her manager if anything else could be done for us. (Note: MANY restaurants as a matter of practice offer a free limoncello at the end of a meal, so that was no offer).

The server returned and stated they could offer us a glass of wine. We also refused, at this point we’d had 2-3 drinks waiting for the table and a bottle of wine with our food, so we were ready to go. We then asked to speak with the owner, who had been throughout the restaurant the entire evening, though never checked in with us directly.

When we spoke with him as we were leaving, he was very dismissive of our concerns regarding the excessive wait to be seated for a reservation. He stated that he “couldn’t kick people out lingering from the 1st dinner seating”, and that they were having difficulties ;managing the expansion to the restaurant.

His statement of “ If you want to be seated right away, next time book the first seating” led us the inform him that we will never be returning to his restaurant.

I don’t care how many famous or beautiful people eat at your restaurant. If you can’t manage your reservations, that is YOUR problem and the customer should not have to put up with being held hostage to a reservation and seated whenever they feel like it.

In a nutshell, don’t encourage their terrible service, even though the food is...

I hate that I’m not giving La Giostra 5 stars all around.

My husband and I ate at the restaurant in November 2022 during our honeymoon in Italy—5 stars for food, service, and atmosphere. The waiter was incredible and so friendly.

I visited last week (September 2024) with my husband and his parents. We hyped up the restaurant, and my mother-in-law read about the restaurant. We arrived and realized the restaurant had expanded. The bar area looks great, awesome that you can get a drink or glass of wine before your reservations. But we arrived before our reservation of 9:15 PM, assuming it would be busy and they probably needed a little time to be notified to get the previous party on their way. The other 2 nights of reservations required us to do a little waiting as well. We are not seated until 10 PM. The hostess almost gave the table away to a party of 3 until the one gentleman corrected her that we had earlier reservations than the party of 3. Thankfully he spoke up because I was getting a little impatient. We are seated and no way comes to our table for 15 minutes for water, wine, antipasti, nothing. It’s like we didn’t even exist in the restaurant. Unfortunately, we had a flight to catch back to the States the next morning, and I went up to the guy who sat us down and said, I’m sorry but who is the waiter because no one has come over for us to order. He said he would be right over. Thankfully he did come almost immediately but I don’t think I did to remind a restaurant that customers exist. Every other restaurant we waited at, we were greeted with a drink, some form of communication of how long, what’s happening.

The food is still incredible but the expansion of the space might have made the service plummet. The wait staff looks chaotic and running around with their heads cut off. I honestly don’t know if I would recommend La Giostra anymore to people visiting Florence or when we come back to Florence if I would make reservations back here.

There is a small chance that the rating would be higher if I hadn’t had another experience to...

My wife and I went here after doing some research online and believing this was a top dining destination in Florence. Some Instagram video labeled this “one of the best 5 steaks in the world” (lol) and a couple threads on Reddit also said it was a good choice.

Sadly, that reputation did not match our experience at all.

Here were a few of our issues:

The service was inattentive, disorganized and generally amateurish. I don’t know if it was seasonal staff or poor hiring, but the servers did not match the level of establishment that this place stylizes itself as. Instead, it felt like a cash-grab tourist trap where there was inelastic demand and whatever corner could be cut was.

The food wasn’t that good! We ordered the pear and cheese dumplings and there were parts that had many layers of dough and were unpleasantly chewy. The filling also wasn’t flavorful and we heard the table next to us ask the server if there were actually pears in the dumpling.

The Florentine steak was a step better, but it could have came out fresher than it did. Also, at €138 it was a bit more expensive vs other restaurant and wasn’t dry aged or anything else that might justify that price point.

There is a full wine list, but our server only offered us 2 types of wine by the glass. If you want to have a Chianti with your steak, you will need to order a bottle.

I ordered a cocktail at the bar. Probably not “the move” when in Italy but serving a Jack Daniel’s + Martini Rossi + 2 fluorescent maraschino cherry Manhattan for €20 should have been my first sign this place was more about the scene than the food.

Worse than having a lackluster time, we felt like we were being duped. We sat in a beautiful dining room with other tourists all told to believe that this was the spot since the reservation was tough to get and celebrities sometimes make their way through. But it was that image, not the actual product of warm service and delicious food, that the restaurant was selling. I hope this can serve as a warning sign for others who may be tempted by this...