Trattoria Da Guido — Restaurant in Florence

Terrible customer service, waitress flat out lied to us, mediocre food. Long read but it is my whole honest experience.

The waitress greeted us with “Hey Kids” and treated us as such throughout. Lady did not smile at us throughout and seemed annoyed while taking our orders. I ordered the “menu Toscana”, which consisted of two dishes, a pasta and a meatballs with potatoes. The first of two dishes came out with the rest of the food my friends ordered. With it being a smaller portion, I finished before the rest of my group, after which, the waitress was no where to be found to serve the meatballs, ask us if we wanted another drink or how the food was doing. My friend ordered pizza and basically got a piece of toasted bread in the shape of a circle with salami and cheese on top of it. Long after everyone was done eating, I had to flag the waitress down for the second dish, which I no longer wanted, and being in plain sight of the kitchen, they had not made. She rudely told me “it’s already made” and rushed off without listening to what I had to say. While she, again, in plain sight, asked the chef to make the meatballs right in front of me. As a result my friends and I had to wait an additional 15 minutes for the meatballs to be made, and then another 10 minutes for me to eat. After which again, we had to flag the waitress down and ask for the bill. Mind you this was 3pm on a Thursday, with empty tables everywhere, it’s not a big dinner rush or anything. However after waiting another 10 min with no bill, we had to physically get up and ask another man for the bill, who also sneered and annoyingly gave us the bill after another 5 min. We easily spent 2.5 hours here to get a quick meal just because of all the delays. Food itself was nothing special, like I mentioned earlier, the pizza was just toasted bread with salami and balls of cheese. Other friend had steak and couldn’t eat parts of it due to it being too raw. Meatballs didn’t seem to be fully cooked through. Another group of 8-10 people were seated close by in the 2.5 hours we were there. When they told the waitress they were only interested in drinks, she got the same older man who ran the place, where he told them that they won’t serve them if they only want drinks and they should leave if that’s what they wanted. VERY rudely. As they should, the group left and the place was empty once again. In conclusion, mediocre food with mediocre pricing, but terrible customer service where the waitress flat out lied to me. They put family owned on the outside, but they don’t seem too happy...

I recently ate here for the second time, two years apart, and it did not disappoint. My first experience here was in 2023 and I remember the owner being very protective of the diners when the marching band/pick-pockets made their way down the street. He was extremely vocal about leaving the guests alone and making sure we could eat in peace. I enjoyed the Florentine steak (25€ combo with a drink and a side), and hyped it up to my family back in the states.

Fast forward two years, and I came back to Florence with my family. My dad had been looking forward to a Florentine steak, so obviously we came here after having such a great experience a few years ago. My dad said it was the best meal he had in all of Italy, so I’ll let that speak for itself. Our server was especially accommodating and let me get grilled vegetables as a side at no extra cost. It’s a small thing, but still very gracious nonetheless.

Speaking of our server, he was exceptionally kind and is the reason I’m even writing this review. A little backstory—my family and I needed to book a taxi to get to the airport at like 4am. This was my third visit to Florence and in years past (2017 and 2023), my Airbnb host or hotel always called one for us with no issues both times before. I’m gathering the process has changed since then because our host would not help this time. So, learning that Florence uses the two taxi apps, we tried scheduling one to no avail. The reservation kept being rejected. We called and couldn’t get an answer from either company. So, we went to dinner feeling a bit frustrated. On a whim, we asked our server about it to see if he had any tips for helping us secure a cab, and he ended up calling the company for us. Ultimately, he was told that we couldn’t reserve it and to just show up to a taxi-loading spot (which is what we did and had no issues securing one for five people at like 4am). All of that to say, it was unbelievably kind to help us out like he did. He had nothing to gain and went out of his way to help some annoying tourists. I would come back here solely for that reason, not to mention the...

The restaurant owner exhibited a negative attitude, as I ordered just a coke to which would of came to €3.50 plus cover charge of €2 total €5.50, I work in customer service (hotel) and live in Firenze and had just finished work and was still full from my lunch break, my two friends whom were already at the restaurant eating planned to meet here had ordered over €30 worth of food, so as I presume that as I would join them midway and spending my €5.50 supporting a local business that I had previously visiting this restaurant spending over €100 knowingly to the owner that this would’ve been no questions asked OK! but no as he continued to rude in both broken English and Italian not giving any chance to respond, I do understand that it’s a restaurant and I have seen Italians drinking in restaurants around Firenze and not ordering any for over the past year that I’ve been living here! To top it all off the restaurant holds 50 persons and we three were the only ones their! the place was empty at 6:25pm Friday so more reason to support this local business! before I had recommended this restaurant to over hundreds of tourists staying 300 meters away in the past but I’ll be doing quite the opposite for now on! I invite the owner for his response not a generic message as I have seen in the reviews.

In my review I give one star to all because in Italian if the owner treats you like ( you know what) then all becomes (you know...