L'Acerba Osteria Dinamica — Restaurant in Palermo

Lets start with the good stuff. The petite piazza is very cute and serves as a beautiful canvas for good food and a lovely dining experience. Furthermore, as a first drink the Sicilian spritz really is a refreshing and well-arranged bitter change to the standard aperol. Sadly, our experience went rapidly south as soon as the food was served: It cant be anything but disappointing when the size of the dishes, the quality and flavor of the foods simply pales in comparison to the wordy menu and the prices.

I have worked in this industry for half my life. I dont complain, if an order gets fergot or something doesnt taste 100% to my liking. But if all the disappointments pile up, its time to let let the stars drop. In this case -3, here is the reasoning (in the mild hope the management will take this as constructive criticism): -1 star: it doesnt help when you order for 2 people and all your dishes arrive 15 minutes apart. Especially when you keep noticing batches of the same dish getting washed out the kitchen at a time and distributed around the tables like at a some cafeteria. -1star: if your waitperson keeps asking you to smile despite the bad service, fergot orders and far from perfect timing, offers a digestive on the house and fails to bring it to you for another 20 minutes while encouraging you to smile some more - then I am incluned to view this as bad service. and if finally that water complains to his colleague in Italian (assuming I dont understand it) that we didnt leave enough tip … I gotta say: false sense of pride. -1star: the above mentioned discrepancy between description and price on the menu vs portion-size and quality of the dishes.

All in all: dear fellow traveler - I hope you find a more worthy destination for...

Very disappointing- mediocre food, high prices and poor attitude from some staff. It was a late start (no orders taken till 8pm despite being seated at 7:30), then we found the non-seafood options to be very limited (only steak as a secondi). I settled on a salad and the carbonara, which is usually a good option. Service was fine but not really attentive and some (not all) waiters seemed a little arrogant, as if they were doing us a favour letting us eat there. The starters came out pretty quickly (sardines and my salad) - both were OK but nothing better than what I could do myself. Then the next course took half an hour to come out, which was the longest we’d waited for any meal during two weeks in Sicily. I was hoping the wait was worth it but sadly it wasn’t - the carbonara was extremely salty, so much so that I only managed to eat half. We did mention this to the waiter when he asked if we had liked it but all he did was looked a bit surprised and left it at that. The OH’s grilled mackerel was apparently nice but relatively small and plain. Given the highish prices and the mediocre food quality, we skipped dessert. I went to pay and the unsmiling manager popped the tip jar down in front of me and asked me to tip (if I wanted to). Even had I been considering it, being asked to do it means no...

I will start by saying that a non-Italian speaker is at an absolute disadvantage at this overrated restaurant. Firstly, there were no English menus - something that one wouldn’t expect at such an expensive restaurant. Well, to be fair, many restaurants in Italy do not have English menus, but I at least got my money’s worth - 99% of the time! Waiter A was rather nice, spoke English and tried to explain the menu. The appetizer was amazing - hands down, one of the best. And then comes the main course - disgusting pasta with ricotta and tasteless pasta with shrimp (may I say... 4 shrimps!). We paid almost 30 euro for the main dishes - don’t get me wrong...it wouldn’t be a problem if it tasted as good as the appetizer. As I was settling the bill (as well as recovering from the shock of the price), waiter B clears up my table and takes away my glass (still half full!) without asking me if I was done. This is utter rudeness and because of this terrible service, I am terribly disappointed with this restaurant. I suggest and advice you guys to go for the Appetizers but forget the main course - and hold on to your drinks!!

P.S. the one star is for the appetizer...