L'Ostricaio — Restaurant in Naples

I would not recommend this place! In fact, for the money we spent I should not have left this place as angry as I am. The service is terrible—we waited almost a full hour for the raw appetizer for two. Then another 30 min+ for porcini pasta and grilled shrimp. The dishes were ok but nothing special, to be honest. The raw fish was fresh, which was nice, but the terrible service ruined the experience enough that the rest felt insignificant. Additionally, the oysters were not great, not at all briny and a little on the chewy side. The shrimp were the best part of the crudo dish (which was €50). The porcini pasta was good, but not quite as good as other pasta I’ve had in Napoli. The grilled shrimp were as expected, but a very tiny portion. I will not be coming back and I will recommend others to avoid this place.

Not to mention we made a reservation days in advance to secure our spot and were placed in a corner inside immediately in front of the blasting AC.

Let’s talk about dessert, an order of panna cotta and double macchiato should be hard to mess up—alas they did—they brought single espresso without milk, and the Panna Cotta was terrible. Extremely firm and with a greasy flavor. If you want a nice evening don’t go here.

I highly recommend these as alternatives: Biancomangiare or Osteria Da Antonio. The former makes you feel like you’re at a Neapolitan nonna’s dinner table—delicious fresh food with personable and exemplary service; while the later has fresh seafood, very well prepared and with excellent portion sizes, great service, and personal touches.

In case it seems that ours was a uniquely terrible experience—the Italian family at the table next to ours also looked very frustrated. Also, it is worth mentioning that smiles and laughter were not seen or heard anywhere in the busy restaurant except the large table in the back who had 4 waiters and the owner running back and forth to them constantly—must have been friends of the owner.

We left the restaurant very...

The inside and the outside of the restaurant are very nice/modern and presumably recently refurbished. Given the appearance, the reviews and ratings we were expecting good things, however we had a strange experience. My girlfriend ordered a seafood pasta dish, when the waiter brought it over he apologised and gave her a mushroom pasta dish. We explained that this was incorrect and he agreed and said he would speak to the chef. He came back to tell us that the chef thought my girlfriend would prefer the mushroom pasta? We presume that the waiter miscommunicated it to the chef as he was so apologetic.

The waiter said he could swap it but seemed very reluctant. Confused by this we decided it better to just cut our losses and accept the wrong dish. There was an incredibly small amount of mushroom in the pasta.

We were fully expecting the incorrect dish to be discounted due to the admitted mistake but were disappointed to see the mushroom dish was on the bill and the same price as the seafood €12. When it came to the bill, we were told that the card machine cannot process splitting 50/50 as well... Not sure that is true.

First...

This very popular Italian eatery was recommended to us and it had decent reviews so we thought...why not?

Trouble is......we left very disappointed. The service was friendly but they were just not that attentive and we had to ask several times before we finally listened to.

The owner (or head waiter, not sure which) even ignored us when we were asking for something as there were no other staff around. Rude or hard of hearing?

The food was average at best. If they had a better grasp of english or indeed, if I could speak Italian, I would have explained all the obvious shortcomings. My fish selection was pitiful and extremely average in both selection and taste. One fish was unedible and all the others tasteless. One small victory was the fried calamari as I was told this was the "best ever!"

That was the only success foodwise between 8 people!

We also had pizzas that we could have found better in Berlin (which is in itself and insult to Naples).

The bill came to over €40 per head and that was the final straw as we have eaten far better for much less here in Naples.

I cannot recommend. I would avoid and...