Osteria dei Sapori Perduti — Restaurant in Modica

Okay, I’m not a fan of leaving poor reviews unless something has been outstandingly bad, as reviews matter and people often put their heart and soul into a business, but this has been bugging me since my lunch.

I pride myself on being able to pick a good restaurant, however also fail regularly 😂 TBH I thought this looked a little touristy at first so hasn’t given much thought, then I glimpsed at the great reviews and thought yep, my lunch place. Should have read as whilst there’s heaps of glowing, there’s also a steady stream of poor.

So service was fine. Not great but fine. Waited ages to order but wasn’t in a rush so no big deal. However waitress helped move my table out of the sun which was nice.

but food was very average. Had the ravioli and there was meant to be basil and fennel, aside from what looked like one fennel seed couldn’t taste either. Tiny smattering of pork and sausage that was meant to be in there. Tomato sauce lacked any depth - how do you make a decent sauce? Tomatoes, some onion, garlic, basil all in together - season - simmer for 20 min. Not hard, but this didn’t even have the flavour of that basic recipe.

The bread was average but as much as I love Italy, this isn’t uncommon. Plate of vegetables was better, had a bit do spice and flavour.

But 20 euro for this where the ravioli tasted like someone would whip up at home (and I hate to say the words ‘bottle sauce’ came to kind) compared to other eating in Italy and I’d avoid. Maybe I was there on a bad day, who knows. But the food was very bland and prices too high for that.

And I feel bad leaving this review 😬😬😬 if it looks like it’s for you, I guess...

Of all the restaurants I visited during my two-week long holiday in Sicily, this was my favourite. This is a simple, unpretentious, and inexpensive restaurant frequented by locals and tourists. I really appreciated the focus on traditional dishes made with "fava cottoia di Modica", a type of bean that is used by farmers as part of crop rotation (alternating with grazing areas used for grazing Modicana cows), and which used to be a stable of the local diet. The desserts are also worth trying (the gelo di limone I had was superb).

The only downside to this restaurant is that it can get busy, and hence a little chaotic and slow, at busy times such as weekends. Unfortunately this was the case on one of my visits on a busy Saturday at lunchtime. Thursday lunchtime, however, was a lot less busy and I had a better experience during this...

We were turned away the first time because they had a group and gave us a reservation for 45 min later. All good there. When we were finally seated we waited 25 min for the server to take our order and that's after we started to walk away from our table. The person we thought was going to take our order at first was only the drink person and there were excuses given. Personally I believe that as a consumer I don't want to hear excuses and being disorganized and unprepared is not my problem. What we wanted was not available so we ordered from the smaller menu we were given, food was tasty enough but we would probably not go back. We like the whole experience and would have enjoyed sitting at an outside restaurant more. It might have just been an off day, very busy with groups but that is...