I Contadini — Restaurant in La Spezia

Typical trattoria with a nice view of the gulf, up a very narrow, steep street. Food-wise, I would Not recommend the stuffed mussels or the raviolini al sugo. The mussels stuffing was tasteless and crumbly. Simply put, they should have been made with the moist crumb inside the bread (mollica), not dry bread crumbs (pangrattato). There was hardly a hint of anything else that should be in them, namely mortadella, parmigiano cheese and parsley as a minimum. The ravioli were commercially made with overly thick dough, and only a dot of ominous looking dry green stuffing, without even the scent of the braised meat typical of the real home-made ravioli I grew up eating in La Spezia. The ravioli in the pictures from other diners were Not the ones we received. Portion size was also disappointing, with 8 SMALL mussels per person. The French fries were clearly frozen, pale, and quite limp. Barely edible. On the flip side, the entrees ordered by the rest of our group were above average, including the vitel tonne (veal in tuna sauce), and the seafood fettuccine. Dessert was commercially made and just doctored up. Nothing we tasted felt home-made. The house white sparkling wine was very good. Service was excellent given how busy the place was. Our waitress was attentive and readily took care of our requests for cheese (served in small individual packs) and salt. Beware: there was No water, No toilet paper and No towels in the bathroom. Bring your own. Overall it was an ok experience, not one I'd care to repeat. There are many other trattorias in La Spezia. My suggestion would be to go enjoy the view with coffee and...

5 stars for the food. 0 stars for the service.

The food was delicious, although the portions varied wildly by what was orderd. One dish contained enough for 2.5 people, while another only just had enough for a single person.

The service was absolute atrocious. We spent almost 3 hours on the set menu (starter, first dish, second dish, dessert). As we had been seated in what was basically the ally by the restaurent where tables were set up, we didn't see any staff for sometimes 20-30 minutes at a time. They didn't bring us the starters (I don't know if this was because we didn't specifically say we wanted the startes that was included in the set menu), but instead brought one of our first dishes. 40 minutes later we managed to explain to the waiter we also wanted our starters. After waiting another 40 minutes after the first dish, we had to flag down a staff member to tell them that we wanted the second dish we had ordered. We didn't get the feeling they had things under control as we were brought dishes that weren't ours (we of course told them this).

All in all I would not recommend going to this restaurant unless you have at least 3 hours to spend on dinner, the majority wondering of you'll actually get...

I didn't know Italian food could be bad.... On the other hand our waitress was extremely nice and accommodating!

The food though, probably worst meal I've ever had when eating out. My mom and I both got the fixed menu, started off with plates of appetizers, none which really had flavor... Also if you want flavor (pepper, cheese, etc.) It all comes in plastic containers. Our first plate was lobster pasta that didn't have lobster and I had fried weird pesto pasta... Both extremely salty and not good. Dinner was the fried seafood... shrimp was fried in the shell so almost impossible to eat. I had stuffed mussels, but couldn't tell what they were stuffed with as it tasted like mush..

50$ later and so very disappointed.

Service...