Ponticello Taverna Gastronomica — Restaurant in Palermo

At first we were excited because the staff had greeted us in a very friendly and nice way at the entrance, plus the menu looked mouth-watering. The cocktails were nice but there came our first disappointment : my partner's cocktails (8€ and 15€) came with A LOT of ice cubes (12 ice cubes in the glass). Actually there were so many ice cubes that by 3 sips all his cocktail was gone. For 15€ it is quite disappointing. Secondly, the hamburger's bread was stone hard, as if it had been microwaved... Last but not least, the second dish we had ordered was the grilled octopuss. While bringing our food, the waitress dropped a big piece of octopuss on the floor. She cleaned it and we then waited in vain for her to bring us some extra octopuss to replace the big piece that she had dropped on the floor... She never brought us the missing piece so we can definitely say that we paid 14€/16€ -don't remember- for 1/3 of the dish. Unbelievable. It's okay to drop the dish, sh*t happens, we're all human. But it's definitely not right to penalise the customer for your own mistake. At no time did we suspect that the waitress would simply leave us like that, with part of the dish missing from our table, so impossible did it seem to us to make such a...

TL;DR: I do not recommend this restaurant if you're feeling like eating something good. For drinks it's ok.

We ordered 4 dishes in total, none were good. Either the cook was on sickleave or changed recently, I can't explain the 5 stars reviews otherwise. The medium-well "steak" was raw and we still don't know what animal it was made of. Owners claim it's beef, but we're pretty sure it was pork. Whatever bleesed creature it was, I feel sad for it having to die to be served like that. We were offered to get a different dish instead, but after the owner told us he's vegetarian (how does he taste the food their cook is making???) and nothing else we ordered tasted any good, we politely declined and got 2 beers, 2 shots, a tiramisu (which was not bad) and 25% off from the steaks (which we didn't even eat) as compensation. 100% off for the steaks would've been a fair compensation (we don't need the rest), but ok, we don't feel like arguing. Salad was dry leaves, tomatoes and mozzarella, served without dressing or even salt. I'm not even sure they washed the veggies before cutting them, it...

The atmosphere was great and we recommend you book a table as many walk-in’s were turned away as it was full. Table was very dirty when we arrived but they cleaned it eventually.

Ordered aperols, caprese, seared tuna and seafood pasta:

Aperols mostly ice but beautiful thin-rimmed glasses. Buratta Caprese: Burrata was not traditional ie not soft on the inside (likely mozzarella instead of Burrata) and did not come with basil and large sliced tomato as expected but rather with lettuce and baby tomatoes. We found a hair in the dish. Seared tuna was beautiful: big portion and quality meat but cold inside. Side dish was not inspiring: again baby tomatos and lettuce. Pasta was tasty but the portion was small and accompanying mussels were exceptionally tiny (my family is mussel farmers so maybe I am too strict!)

Price: coming from Paris we felt the prices a bit too expensive for result and service. Table service is €2 additional per person.

Sadly the service was very, very slow where one eventually lose your sense of humor and just...