Regia Corte - L’eccellenza del Territorio — Restaurant in Matera

I thought a lot before giving 4 stars to this extraordinary restaurant. Because normally I would give 5 stars but, when I recall the details to my memory, not everything was perfect. First the positives: the setting is truly amazing (in my opinion though, a percentage of the price tag is due to this magnificent view). The waiters were all very polite and attentive and genuinely friendly. We were seated at the best spot of the restaurant. The portions were generous for this type of fine dining and plus there were "hidden" extra servings you might not see on the menu (as for example, a tasty pre-desert mousse served in fine porcelain coffee sets). The dishes were obviously conceived by a talented Chef, they were creative and prepared with utmost care. The manager helped us to select from the menu and although we were two adults and a teenager, he gladly accepted our decision to order just for two adults. Now the negatives: it would be nice to be able to mix-and-much some dishes. When fine restaurants are very rigid with their menu it can get a little bit of "authoritarian cuisine". Some dishes were superfluous. For example, the perfectly cooked ravioli dish we ordered came with a very restful green sauce but the waitress poured a large quantity of red sauce on top (as it is customary to do nowadays in fine restaurants). But the result was a bit disappointing. The colours didn't match, the texture got too watery and most of all, the palette was "confused". Also, the sweets at the end were too many but only one was of a very high standard. In my humble opinion, it is better to serve one unforgettable dish rather than many average. Lastly, the two glasses of wine we ordered (a local red and a local white) were very average in quality. We tasted local wines by the glass in good restaurants for a week in southern Italy and we were overwhelmed by their colour, bouquet of smells and taste. This was not such a case (it might be that the manager chose two of their cheapest wines to save us some money though). Overall, my advice is: DO GO TO THIS RESTAURANT IF YOU ARE PREPARED TO PAY AROUND €90-110 PER PERSON, WITH WINE. BUT MAKE SURE YOU ARE SEATED AT THE BEST SPOT TO ENJOY THE AMAZING VIEW, AS PART OF WHAT YOU WILL PAY IS...

I was hesitant to post this review publicly, as I know this restaurant as a good reputation however they never responded to my private feedback that I had submitted. So here we are.

We dined here for our honeymoon and we were super excited for this meal and view as we had read great reviews! However, we left very disappointed. The food was tasty, how ever my pasta was served cold…I would have let the staff know this but they never asked us how ANY of our meals were, let alone coming over to check in on us to see how we were doing or if we needed anything, they didn’t even offer us more drinks - so we only had the two drinks for the whole evening. It was very hard to grab their attention so were we not able to order more drinks or tell them about the cold pasta. When paying so much for a special romantic dinner you expect to be taken care of. We are usually very easily pleased however the staff were extremely inattentive. We had filled out the form saying that it was our honeymoon and there was no mention of it at all. The manager I think it was, who we paid the bill to also didn’t ask us how our night and meal was…just took our money and...

This would be 1 star if it wasn’t for the excellent service and location. The experience is probably worth more stars but given the high price it deserves to be critiqued properly. The experience is sold at a premium (3 times what one might expect to pay for a very good dinner in matera) but the taste falls very short. We had the meat tasting menu at €85. Presentation is good, but the food was not great, lacking seasoning across the board and generally lacking in flavour and interest. Strange pairings do not work, and do not appear to reflect the local cuisine either in all honesty. The amuse bouche and starter were ok, but cured veal was tough and tasteless, the pasta had an unpleasant aftertaste and was very one dimensional, whilst the pork was soft, it was bland and the chip undercooked. The dessert was overly complex, and aubergine jam was bitter and too much. The macarons were undercooked. As mentioned, the view is amazing and the service was excellent, as was the wine, however they didn’t ask us at the end how we felt about the meal, almost as if they know it’s not great. Chefs need to go back to basics as food felt...