UPNEA - Salumeria Mediterranea — Restaurant in Naples

TL:DR Disappointing. Not a bad place, but it has a long way to go to earn the prices asked on the menu.

The place looks nice and presents itself as gourmet dining. Nothing crazy rich, but certainly artsy and on the upper level. The exhibition of 80s anime portraits is lovely. The menu prices definitely align with this expectation. But then the expectation is not met.

The food (in so far as the eponymous salumi go) is "ok", maybe even "good", but nothing special, nothing to write home about. Nothing I could rate 4 stars. And then both the presentation and the quantity leave a lot to be desired. I can understand paying 16€ for barely a taste of a small selection of things when the overall experience is memorable or the quality is very good. But this isn't it.

The service was polite and didn't cause any problems, but it also wasn't particularly charming or swift. A solid 3 stars... except:

when asked for info about the food, the waitress had no idea about it. "What's in the Tagliere?" shouldn't be an unexpected question and in the end we received no answer. The selection of cheeses and salumi remained a mystery to us. What was the foam? What where the different kinds of (maybe?) ricotta? Etc.

we were served the side dishes waaay before drinks or the dishes they were supposed to accompany, leaving us in the company of 4 bowls of veggies for quite some time

when asked about desserts a waiter was well informed and explained them to us (👍) but then it turned out that only a few were available (🙁) but the kitchen would prepare more (🙂) but only after a bunch of the available ones were gone (🙁) but he could have asked for what we wanted anyway (🙂) but it would have taken maybe 20-30 minutes so... not gonna happen (🙁) even though we expressed that we could happily have waited.

At least the cocktails were well made and...

Huge disappointment. I was really excited to try the ragú at this restaurant, as I read it was amazing, among other dishes; unfortunately our dinner did not go as amazing as we had hoped. First, they brought one of us our dinner with the appetizers, so my aunt was either forced to let it get cold and wait or eat first and watch us eat later. We waited a really long time for our dinners to come out, the table next to us came in after us and order tons of dishes(!) and got all of them before our main dishes arrived. I order the ragú pasta, my boyfriend got the genovese pasta, and his mother got the bufalo burger(which is just a patty, no bun). The “burger” was good but it said it came with a side salad, but i wouldn’t claim a thin pile of shredded iceberg with nothing on it a salad. Now for the worst part; Both my bf and I’s pasta’s were SEVERLY undercooked. As a chef, I understand what al dente is, and frankly I prefer it. I think that good fresh pasta is toothsome and textured, not too soft/not too hard. This pasta was white and crunchy in the middle. Inedible. When I asked our waitress what could be done about this she claimed that the chef put it in the boiling water the amount of time that this particular pasta shape takes(15min) and that was it. No apology, no offer to cook it a little longer. Just this is what you get; claiming that this is al dente and that it was fine the way it was. I strongly disagreed and the pasta was left on the plate. Overall, an over rated restaurant with a confusing theme and menu with disappointing food...

The perfect end to our three days in Naples. Rosita did everything to make our two hours as memorable as possible. Her kindness and patience, as we made our choices, was saint like! We shared a vegetable starter.....best starter I've had. The ragu was perfect and hearbreakingly delicious. They had ran out of my seafood pasta choice but didn't tell me and placed a fresh vegetables pasta in front of me but it was so delicious I didn't complain. They also didn't charge me for my dish. Wine was perfect, beer was delicious and food flawless. Clean, modern and contemporary and very Italian . Warm, welcoming staff but brush up on your basic language skills. Tip....their house white is delicious at €6 a glass. Buy the bottle! I'll be back. Thank...