Arrecrià bistrot — Restaurant in Naples

This is a difficult review to write. My husband and I (both vegan) visited Napoli last weekend for my 40th birthday and the visit to this restaurant was meant to be the culinary highlight of our stay and a belated, celebratory Birthday meal. We were truly looking forward to it as it is top rated on both Google and Happy Cow. Our experience was not on par. I'll try to keep it simple. The positive; Our starters were lovely; the trio of bruschette is great and the vegan caprese was well executed, although the star of the show was a vegan mozzarella and it was store bought not home made(I asked). *Nice choice of non alcoholic organic drinks (although a fair few non alcoholic drinks were out of stock) *Staff was friendly.

Now for the negative; *First thing, the music was fairly loud cheesy dance/ pop, not exactly nice dinner music, which was interrupted every couple of minutes by the staff asking Alexa for something else. It might seem like a detail but it ruins the ambiance of a restaurant. *We were not done with our starters that our mains were served. I still had about a quarter of my Caprese in front of me and the waiter left the main on the table next to us. This is a major lack of service etiquette. You wait for people to finish their starters, take their plates away and then serve the main. *I am almost certain my main was reheated in a microwave. When food cools down, it cools on the edges and is still warm in the middle. My plate had really hot bits on the edges and some cold towards the middle. It didn't seem freshly made and was way too rich (dripping in oils from both olive oil and vegan cheese). I managed to eat about half of it and left the rest. Believe me I always finish my food, it takes a lot for me not to. *When I mentioned the issue, the waiter was polite and offered a free pudding as an apology but by that time we were just fed up and decided to ask for the bill and leave. We were faced with an astronomical bill of £67 for that. They didn't deduce anything as an apology.

Disappointed doesn't cut it.

We much preferred spending time in the pizzeria restaurants, more authentic, eating Marinara pizza and costing the...

I usually don't leave reviews for restaurants. But I make an exception for this wonderful place. Let me start by saying that I think I know a thing or two about vegan food. I've been to many of the top vegan restaurants in Europe. I'm also a fairly good vegan home chef myself who loves to experiment. As a general rule, I prefer vegan food which doesn't try to imitate meat- or cheese-based dishes. The result is often dishes which just are a bit more boring than the original. My philosophy is that vegan food often becomes better when one allows vegan cuisine to develop without being forced to look or taste like meat-based dishes.

This restaurant does exactly the opposite of that! It proudly tries to imitate and replicate traditional Neapolitan dishes, many of which famously rely rather heavily on meat and/or cheese.

And... the result is just fabulous. It's fantastic and really won us over. We had meatballs and fries, lasagna, pasta with ragu and sausage with spinach. All the meat replacements have been developed and made by the chef himself, based on pea protein. Particularly the meatballs and the sausage are probably the best vegan meat replacements I've ever had. The bechamel sauce in the lasagne was also out of this world - so rich and heavy and decadent. Unfortunately we didn't have time to order a desert, I'll leave that for next time.

I'm not an expert on Neapolitan cuisine, so I'm not going to give a verdict on how people who love meat-based Napolitan food would react to these dishes. But for me, at least, this was a fantastic meal: Lots of taste, and rich and hearty in a way which felt very "Neapolitan" to me. Fingers crossed for this restaurant and the lovely people who run it. I will for sure come and visit again...

Naples doesn't have many vegan options, but this is definitely at the top of the list. The quality is unmatched and the flavors are so authentic and delicious. If you are staying down the hill, it takes some time to get to the top - but the trek is so worth it!

The cutlets, the bruschetta and the tuna were amazing.

The service was friendly and the flavors were so incredible. The menu has changed since we were there a couple of months ago, so I can't recall all of the names.. but just know, you shouldn't...