Ai Palmenti Ristorante — Restaurant in Matera

We saw the restaurant near our hotel for the night and wished to eat something authenthic as it is written overall. The waitress does not speak english, the waiter maybe a little. We saw on the door the menu with the tagliata, but it was not possible to order because they did not have the beef. So we ordered from the menu 3 dishes, because a lot of dishes were not at all available at the moment. 1. Salmon, that had no pistachios as was written in the menu and was weirdly boiled or poached, very watery. 2. Pork tenderloin is written in the menu but the meat is loin roast or something else, grey in color, with some frozen mushrooms on top, not salty, well done.. definetely not how a tenderloin should be eaten or served. No side. Ordered pasta with mushrooms, received pasta with overly spiced tomato sauce and salami. We ate quickly, because we came from a very long trip and were very hungry and tired.

We received some olives and taralis, this was the best of all of the things. We asked for water and it was not bottled. We took also 3 glasses of red wine, the wine was okay.

The cherry on the top was the bill, that had no specification on how much anything costs, the menh for tourist the waitress was offering us was 22 euro, our bill for 3 was 66 euro, we would say they cheated us at least for 20 euro, because each of us only had one dish no antipasti and the dishes on the menu were from 10-13 euro.. but we payed and left because we really wanted to leave this horrible restaurant.

Do not recommend. Better to eat ice...

Horrendous service, really poor food, very cold. We waited over half an hour to be served water. We then asked for the wine list and the waitress told us she would give us a taste of the wine she had just opened and if we liked it we could have that. We asked what type of wine it was and she had no idea. We took 2 glasses. Then asked for another glass after our main course and the waiter told us he didn't want to open a bottle of wine just to serve 1 glass... never experienced something like this! The pasta ragù was just pasta with tomato sauce and 5 pieces of sausage. The 200g of beef was more like 100g and we asked for rare and got well done. From the photos the food looks amazing but it seems like there was something wrong in the kitchen. The waiter mentioned that they are moving place soon and so it really seems like they can't be bothered. Really disappointing and not cheap...

We found this restaurant as we we wanted to buy a bottle of water. The director said they do not have bottles to sell but she went and got glasses and gave us cold bottles water. We were impressed as she did it from her heart. Did not charge anything so we decided to take note of the restaurant and then come back later for lunch. The restaurant is nothing sort of amazing. The service is amazing from both her and the other waiter that was attending us. We had the mozzarella to start and it was one of the best, if not the best, I have ever had. My pasta. Best ever. My wife’s carpaccio, amazing. In wrote to her as her English was not great:

Sei una persona fantastica. Ci hai dato dell’acqua quando avevamo sete. Siamo tornati e abbiamo scoperto che il cibo è STREPITOSO. Consiglieremo questo ristorante a tutti i nostri amici.”

Fantastic place. Food is...