Mastunicola — Restaurant in Palermo

We went to this restaurant because we had read good reviews but it was a total disaster. We ordered two pizzas and a bottle of water; the bottle arrived after 5 minutes but we waited over an hour and a half for the food. During that time we obviously checked with the waiter several times and the only response we got was “your pizzas are on your way”. We asked several times, as we saw many people who had arrived after us finishing their dinner, and kept getting the same response. Finally, after 90 minutes waiting -with no explanation, no food, no appetizers- we were told there’d had been a problem with our order and it hadn’t gone through. By that time we had even asked to be sitted inside as it was getting super cold outside and most it the people had left. Then we were told our pizzas would be ready in 5minutes but one of the pizzas we had originally ordered was no longer available. At that time they served us some chips, something we appreciated but that came 90 minutes later. It was definitely a disappointment and we actually regretted not having left the restaurant after the first 30-minutes of waiting with no explanation. We understand that sometimes this happens but when you ask more than three times and they don’t check what’s going on and tell you your food is coming you definitely regret having chosen that restaurant. They applied a small discount when paying but after waiting for that long we think that was not enough. Definitively...

Don’t be fooled by the good reviews…no pizza is worth waiting 1.5 hours for (after being seated). First off, it took almost 30 minutes to place our order despite multiple follow-ups. Though we were initially patient since the restaurant was busy, we eventually asked our Italian neighbours to intervene on our behalf when we saw some new arrivals being served within minutes. The restaurant doesn’t seem to have a systematic way to manage tickets, and it was unclear exactly which servers were empowered to take orders.

Thanks to our kind neighbour, a waitress reluctantly came to take our orders, but we waited almost an hour for two pizzas. Though we naturally wanted to follow up, both the waitress and the host were nowhere to be seen. Eventually, the young man who’d initially brought us water asked if we wanted our check, only to be shocked when we replied that we were still waiting for our food! The host then offered some perfunctory apologies and ensured we got our food shortly thereafter, but did not offer any explanation or compensation for what happened.

I’ve visited many parts of Italy and Europe, and have never suffered such bad service. Completely unacceptable.

PS: Seems like most complaints about slow service come from visitors. Not sure what may be driving this, but fwiw, our (Italian) B&B host also said he and his wife waited a long time for their food the last time...

A bit complex experience but will try to be fair overall. 1) Service. Their website and google info states that they are open at 17:00. We arrived on Sunday at 17:00 and they informed us that they are actually open at 19. So we came back at 19:00 and told us that we need to wait till 20:00. Any normal customer would never come back but we wanted to try this Pizzeria because of the levain used and so. The following Tuesday we arrived at 20:00 and tables were empty but reserved for 8:30. The host decided let us in (may be moved because of our experience on Sunday, I do not know).

2. The Pizza: the taste was good, the quality of the flour was quite noticeable. The filling was nice but not spectacular. My mozzarella di Bufala was dried. If you haven't eaten a truly good pizza made from some Napolitanos then you can probably claim that this is the best pizza that you have ever tasted. For me I would give 3,5-4 points on the quality. The dough is a bit too chewy, on the pan-pizza direction. Because of the good trade between Sicily and Campania I would expect a fresh mozarella. Also the size of the Pizza could be a bit more bigger for the price paid. They are extending the place and hope they will solve the inconveniences with customers arrivals. One of the few pizzerias in Palermo betting for high quality ingredients...