La Cucina Della Lodola — Restaurant in Marciano della Chiana

This place was a huge disappointment. Based on the good reviews we decided to have dinner there. The location is nice, but the food and service are not what we were expecting considering the price. The ingredients might be good, but the dishes are lacking seasoning. I think the chef forgot the salt and spices at home that evening. The service is really, really slow. The antipasto was served after more than one hour after arriving. The next courses were served with more than 45 minutes between them. The owner seemed nice in the beginning but her main focus was to push you to order more things from the menu. At the end of the meal, she was just ignoring us and trying hard to make other tables order desserts or another round of drinks. We have been in Italy for a few months now and this is the first time when I feel that we got caught in a tourist trap. With half of the money, you can have a really good meal in any of the villages...

I get what the restaurant is trying to do, farm-to-table non-traditional dishes, but there is huge room for improvement.

We waited at least 1 hour for our first dishes to start coming and afterwards the next dishes came in about 30 min intervals. What we hoped would be a 1 hour meal, turned into almost 3 hours. There weren't even a lot of tables that were being served, but for some reason, the kitchen was serving all tables 1 course at the same time.

The second part, the ideas are good, ingredients seem to be fresh, but the seasoning is missing in some places. The pasta dishes were unseasoned, the second dishes were slightly better.

At this time, the price that you pay here...

Last night we had dinner at the Osteria and were beyond impressed with the restaurant itself, the exquisite service and the glorious flavors of everything we ordered. Even the breadsticks were flavorful as well as the rosemary focaccia bread. We had pasta with a bean and garlic sauce, pork in fig sauce with a topping of shaved pumpkin and a pastry of apple with a fabulous side of ice cream. I could eat those breadsticks forever! The design of the restaurant is contemporary and very comfortable. Very warm and inviting. This dinner experience will be remembered for...