Polpo — Restaurant in Palermo

We had dinner here the other day.

We ordered three courses, caponata to share, then each of us had our own primo and secondo. We ordered a litre of house wine. This arrived in a bottle which stated “0.75 L”. We were charged for a litre, although when we mentioned that we’d only had 0.75L (and that this was stated on the bottle), the staff begrudgingly knocked off €2.50 from the €19 for a litre. The pesce fresco dal banco (fresh catch of the day) wasn’t available.

The caponata was the best dish, some additional touches to the typical ingredients. Then things went downhill. I then had pasta con le sarde. The pasta was scaldingly hot, so much so that it may have been put in the microwave just before serving. It was very bland (difficult to achieve for this dish considering the ingredients which it should contain), and the texture was unpleasantly pasty. The dish so lacked the taste of sardines that I wonder if they had been included; certainly there wasn’t any visual evidence of sardines (e.g. flakes or pieces). I barely managed to eat a third of this dish it was so disgusting (it’s rare for me not to eat something), and one of my companions ate some of it, leaving at least a third uneaten. My secondo was involtino di pesce spada. The fish was dry, and the filling was utterly bland. I left most of the filling. One of my companions had ragù al polpo which had a nice enough flavour, but the pasta again was scaldingly hot. His secondo was polpo grill which had a good flavour, but wasn’t melt in the mouth as he would have expected from a fish restaurant, especially one called Polpo! The other of my companions had polpette di sarde followed by hamburger di pesce. He also tried some of both of the dishes I ordered, agreeing that, like his food, was unappetising, which is an understatement. We also ordered vedure grigliate (grilled vegetables) to share. These lacked salt (and there was neither salt nor pepper on the table), and quite clearly hadn’t been grilled (e.g. the peppers had no signs of having been charred to remove the skin).

The staff were argumentative when we complained about the food, saying that we wouldn’t have eaten everything if we hadn’t liked it. One might have expected that the waitress would have asked if everything was okay when she cleared the plates with food still on them from the table, but she didn’t.

I would not recommend this...

I just had the worst service experience in my life I guess. First I waited outside to be seated. All the staff ignored me. Then I went right into the entrance so they couldn't do that anymore...which I thought. But they did. So I proactively asked if the free table in the corner was available and I was "allowed" to sit down.

After ordering I received my dish - which was probably falsely done for someone else - after about 2 minutes, they just couldn't have prepared that for me. But I did not get the side dish (fries) I ordered with it. So I asked a waiter who I - again - proactively had to call cause everyone seemed to ignore me to bring them because I wanted to eat both dishes together, not one after the other. Seven(!) minutes later one of the waiters brought them but took one of the fries out to eat it right before handing them to me (I am NOT kidding).

When I had finished, no one came to clear my table so I went to the bar to pay. The only thing the owner - who does the payments - said to me was "tabula?" So I told her. She put the bill in front of me, didn't say a word but spoke to an employee, had me pay and then went on. No "thank you", no "have a nice evening", not a single word of gratitude. On top of that my fried fish tasted like chewing gum and the fries were soft and not crunchy at all.

To be fair: the restaurant is decorated nicely and I enjoyed sitting in it (except for the service).

I usually don't write reviews but that really made me angry since the food isn't cheap (it's not super expensive and I am willing to pay for quality don't get me wrong but this just was a bad experience) and they pretend to be a higher-class-ish restaurant. But by no means they showed that. I'd never go there again and I'm sad I did because I had some great evenings in other places just...

Worst restaurant experience ever.

We were very excited to try this new restaurant but we ordered mussels and tried to eat them however most of the dish was inedible (we had to pry them open & they were undercooked). When we brought it to their attention they SEEMED like they were going to be helpful and offered to make things right by bringing us a different dish and/or a menu for us to order. HOWEVER, after waiting for 15-20 minutes all they did was clear our tables and ignore us. When we went to pay for the one dish, side dishes, & bread that we could actually eat they were going to charge us for the dishes we weren’t able to eat or replace which is ridiculous. After pointing out that we weren’t going to pay for what we could not eat & what we waited 15 minutes to get replaced all they did was offer us limoncello shots.

At this point our entire party just wanted to leave and we still had to pay 60 euros for an upsetting meal and a terrible experience.

I understand that they’re a new restaurant but that doesn’t excuse a lack of hospitality and...