Ristorante Lago — Restaurant in Menaggio

I had high hopes for our evening at Ristorante Lago which is part of a 5-star L hotel, but unfortunately, the experience was nothing short of a series of missteps and mismanagement. Here’s a breakdown of what went wrong during our visit:

Overcooked and Undercooked Disasters: One of our main courses was a medium-rare ribeye for two. What arrived at our table was a steak that was clearly medium-well, with no trace of pink in sight. When we pointed this out to the manager, he seemed reluctant to acknowledge the error, despite the clear evidence on our plates. It took another manager to finally intervene and offer us complimentary desserts as compensation. Adding to our culinary woes, we ordered two duck breast main courses. While one was cooked to perfection, the other was rare to the point of being cold in the center. Consistency in the kitchen was lacking.

An Unwanted Serenade: What was supposed to be a fine dining experience turned into a raucous circus, courtesy of a group of women who decided to join the pianist in a drunken sing-along. This impromptu performance lasted nearly two hours and was loud enough to drown out our table conversation. It was evident that other diners were equally irritated by the disruption.

Complication with Compensations: Despite the offer to comp our steak due to the cooking mishap, the bill only reflected a complimentary gelato, not the full range of desserts we had. This required yet another uncomfortable conversation with the staff to correct the oversight.

Coat Check Chaos: The restaurant's handling of our coats and umbrellas was another point of contention. We discovered that two of our umbrellas were missing upon leaving. The front desk handed us two random, wet umbrellas that clearly belonged to someone else. This lack of organization was disappointing and inconvenient.

A Closer Look at Dysfunction: As we exited, we witnessed the manager yelling at the chef through the kitchen window, a sight that didn't inspire confidence in the establishment's professionalism. The chaos didn’t end there; outside, a hotel guest was shouting from their second-floor window at the same group of drunken women who had moved their loud antics to the...

the food was very delicious even though the price was a bit expensive but it was worth it. Me snd my family ordered 2 starters, 2 pastas, and 2 mains. To start off, the raw red prawn was very flavourful with some caviar on top. The pasta was equally good, the gnocchi had a great flavour as it was also served with some muscles. The linguine was also very good as it had a great texture and the technique the chefs used to cook it was amazing. Lastly, the two mains we ordered were the catch of the day fish (sea bream) and tomahawk steak. The sea bream was clearly very fresh and it was very simply delicious as it was coated with salt and pepper and olive oil. As for the steak, the texture was just top of the hill, it had a strong beefy flavour yet it wasn’t overpowering. We also ordered some dessert, the cheese and the tiramisu. For the cheese, we picked parmesan,blue cheese, formagi and more. It was very flavourful and filled with cheese flavour. For the tiramisu, the texture was pure delicious, even though i’m not such a coffee fan, the coffee wasn’t as strong and had a great balance to it. Overall, the dinner...

Lacklustre with an extortionate price tag.

To start, we were given a basket of bread with the tiniest little serving of butter (very bland butter). One of our butters had a tiny hair in it too, I feel like a little olive oil dip would’ve been perfect with the bread.

After looking at the cost of starters/entrees (28eur for a little caprese salad), we decided to just get a main each. We had the ravioli (40eur) , this was very average, nothing special at all. The fish of the day (55eur) was actually quite good, but I’ve still had better for half the price in nice restaurants in central London.

As for the atmosphere and service, it almost felt like the place was closed, the lights were either very dim or off and we had to walk though the restaurant to get someone’s attention so they could seat us for dinner.

From my experience, this restaurant is definitely not worth the price they’re charging, far from it...