Giardini del Massimo — Restaurant in Palermo

This has been possibly the saddest restaurant experience I have ever had. After being sat at the table on our scheduled time, we had to wait approximately 20 minutes to be graced with the menus. After ordering, we had a long waiting time to have all our food arrive in a sorry state. For all the nice presentation and detail included in the menu, the food was the blandest we have had our entire time in Palermo. If you are presenting yourself as a restaurant that serves high quality dishes, albeit in smaller portion, then you'd better make sure your dishes are actually up to par. As it stood, it is almost as if they were afraid to add salt to the dishes. To add to that, the service was so incredibly slow, two of our dishes had to be sent back to the kitchen for reheating. We were almost worried that we would have to resume the 30 minute waiting time between dishes when we sent these back!

I have to say that I do wonder how one can produce such bland dishes with all the excellent produce Sicily has to offer. Would highly recommend going elsewhere if you want a nice meal that actually reaches you without the 30...

I don’t tend to leave negative reviews but what happened to me last week at the giardini del massimo has never happened to me anywhere else. I ordered the peach & avocado salad. It arrived with no salt or vinegar, just olive oil and the presentation left a lot to be desired. I could have overlooked that. But as I picked through it I realized there were bugs embedded into the lettuce. I mentioned it to the waitress and asked them to replace it. I wasn’t upset because mistakes can happen. Unfortunately, she brought the same salad back to me with the lettuce leaves dripping wet. They’d clearly just washed the lettuce from the first salad and put it back into the bowl. As I picked through it I found two more bugs (photos below). Luckily our waitress was lovely and apologized profusely. She insisted the restaurant comp us for the salad & my boyfriend’s pasta. I was very disappointed by the quality of the food and the freshness of the products. I hope in the future the kitchen will put more care into the presentation, recipes & the...

The positive: this place knows how to seem pretentious ,and has the right location for it.

The negatives: flavourless, when not just poorly made, food being peddled at high prices. We had to wait around 20 minutes for the privilege of seeing a menu

In two hours and a half we got served two courses with barely any flavour. Half of our table got served only after the other half was done eating.

After we split the bill we got held back at the table while the maitre checked, in front of us, whether we payed the correct amount. Which we had done, since we are in possession of both a calculator and some integrity. Tip: at least try not to offend the customer. This could have been handled differently.

The waiters were young, clearly overwhelmed, and barely knew their own menu. One of us was served sad potatoes straight out of a hospital kitchen (not even some oil or herbs on top), others cold pieces of meat. Flavourless pasta, overcooked gnocchi, cold and sandy octopus. The pork belly was the one decent dish.

A huge...