Hosteria Caseificio Bertinelli — Restaurant in Noceto

My girlfriend and I booked ourselves a Parmigiano Reggiano cheese production tour and tasting here (€50 for both of us together), and sadly we stayed afterward to have lunch at the Hosteria on our last day travelling in Europe. There were communication issues with the waitress and certainly a glaring problem with the English menu. Despite my best effort to communicate in Italian, it was clear that we were treated like tourists. We were the first or second people to sit in the restaurant and we noticed as more and more (local) people started coming in for drinks and eats, they were being sat in another section of the restaurant as if we were a plague. Soon we discovered that the additional glasses of wine that we ordered after the tasting were filled only 1 finger high while we watched other tables receiving huge pours - more than double our portion. The first glass poured for my girlfriend had an unacceptable amount of dregs/sulfites at the bottom, which I thought was just an accidental oversight. When we finished the cheese sampling, which was indeed delicious, we just wanted to eat a little more to wash the strong taste of this cheese down with maybe some pasta or other tastes.

Rather than order the horse meat filet 🤢 we elected to just get a variety of antipasti (appetizers). On the menu was a cheeseboard that included the local jam we had heard about on the tour and even seen in the shop where the tour finished, but nowhere else on the menu could we find a way to sample the jam/compote. We asked the waitress if there was a way to order only the jam that was part of the cheeseboard on the menu, mentioning that we saw it in the shop and just wanted to add some to our delicious bread. I did not have confidence that she understood us at all. Rather than ask a colleague to verify our order, she brought us back this massive cheese board (keep in mind that we just ate according to my estimation at least half a pound or nearly .25 kilograms of Parmigiano) and a paltry thimble full of pear jam, after being offered no choice in flavor. (There were others available in the shop) Luckily the roasted rosemary potatoes were quite tasty, but the menu translation problem occurred when I ordered the "pickled vegetables in olive oil". What came instead was a massive plate of raw vegetables in a jar, which was surprising given that their shop sells jars of actually pickled vegetables. When I mentioned this to the waitress she said that this is not the way the dish is. "Fresh PICKED vegetables" is something entirely different.

We brought these issues to the attention of the waitress and then the manager/owner man who was quite rude to us and even walked away while my girlfriend was talking to him. He very reluctantly poured another finger of wine into each of our glasses and stormed off. Upon checkout time, there was no offer to remove anything from the bill for the misunderstanding. In fact, the arrogant manager actually typed €30.00 into the credit card machine, said something to himself, then erased the numbers and then typed in €30,90 and then asked us to pay. There was no itemized receipt upon payment, but later we determined that he charged us for an extra two slices of bread that the staff had removed from our table before we were even done with them. 🤷

All of the above plus a hard-to-ignore insect problem made me feel that this place was like a beautiful woman who smiles at you and reveals a mouth of rotten teeth. I could not possibly recommend that you eat here if you are American, and frankly the cheese tasting was perhaps a little overpriced. It was a shame that this was our last stop and final memory of an otherwise beautiful Italian vacation...

There was recently another review that shared the exact same experience we had here, so I do feel validated to leave a 1-star for this restaurant. While the food was good, the service is...well, let's just say selective. We were with a tour group, joining some friends. But, we actually live in Parma and speak and understand Italian! It was obvious the staff purposefully excluded us from the rest of the restaurant. We were probably the second table to sit down after the tour of the factory was complete. Over the course of two hours we watched all the other tables fill, promptly receive service. It wasn't until there was one table left that they brought our food out to us. We did have wine, in the meantime, but my glass was filled with about 3 sips. It was very odd.

If this restaurant relies at all on visitors to the area giving them business they need to make some big changes.

I hope you accept this...

This is a very special place for anyone who loves cheese and in particular for those like me who love Parmesan.

Yes, because here one can both taste really good cheese and see how it's done!

We did the tour late in the afternoon and so we couldn't see all the stages of preparation. Our guide was probably tired at the end of the day and lacked that energy we would have loved to see.

But the space remains special, in particular when one enters the warehouse where the last 4-5 years of products are stored, left to age.

The shop that sells local produce is like heaven for foodies. In particular I signal the presence of a Parmesan creme that I had never seen before.

Surprisingly the tastiest thing was probably the ice cream I had before...