Osteria di Vico Palla — Restaurant in Genoa

Came to Genova for a couple of days and we fancied an authentic genovese restaurant, different, with real genovese dishes...Well ...ask a local!! And he told us to go to Osteria Vico Palla. What an amazing suggestion...a real genovese sent us to a real genovese restaurant. Portions are very generous ( unexpected in these days) and the quality, combination and freshness of the products top of the tops! Clearly we asked for fish dishes... each one more amazing, tasty and delicious than the previous! You feel and breath the passion, the family tradition and the honesty. We were the last to leave and the owner (secretly he told us his nickname was "el cubanito" when he lived for a few years in Miami...) had a family chat with us.. So if you are in Genova and you really want to live and experience a real piece of Genova... you must go to Osteria Vico Palla. I have not been written review for a long while now... but this place, the atmosphere, the real fresh a d excellent quality of the food could not be left untold and so I got inspired to share it with you... lovers of experiences that changes your life and mark your memories! Grateful there are still places like this where you feel part of the family and they treat you as...

Have been three times now - October 2019, October 2017 and June 2014. Consistently excellent every time. One of my favourite restaurants in the world.

Between visits I had been daydreaming about their mandilli di seta - "silk handkerchief" pasta. It has a wonderful texture, and is slathered with sumptuous green pesto. Both the pasta and the pesto are made on the premises every morning and couldn't be fresher. A simple dish but done to perfection.

I also really enjoyed their panissette (little cuboids of fried chickpea flour) and what I assumed to be a seasonal special on those two October visits - fried porcini in breadcrumbs.

Some great local wines on the wine list at very reasonable prices - on the first couple of visits we had a lovely fresh mineral bottle of Gavi (which matched the food perfectly), on the most recent visit they seem to be focusing more on Ligurian wines, but still very nice.

Staff very nice, a few of them speak English, but outside of the summer this is still predominantly a place...

The food was good but the place was so loud that we couldn't even hear the person next to us when trying to converse. The whole room had to yell above each other. The place is clean and beautiful otherwise. The trouble came when we paid the bill... We had a large group and asked to pay separately. The waitress acted like that would be fine. But when we got up to the cashier he insisted that everyone just pay 50 euro per person. That was very unfair because the two of us ordered one dish each, one bottle of water, and one dessert and NO alcohol. Our total should have been around 45 euro for both of us, not 100 euro total! We had no clue that it would be split that way. It doesn't even seem believable that the total came to an even 50 euro per person. There was no receipt of anything for us to look at. The service was even slow. My meal finally came when everyone else was almost done eating. It might be a great place for a small group, but I won't...