Trattoria Al Sorriso — Restaurant in Palermo

I want to explain my two stars in the following. The one is for the food. It was good but average for a trattoria in Palermo. I'm in the city every year so my review is based on my experience with other trattorias. First of all they have coperto. Which is outstanding imho as the location is outside of the tourist zone and all the other trattorias have no coperto in the near vicinity. Also they charged 6€ for the cheapest 0,5L vine. Haven't seen that rip off in a while. Also they didn't serve bread which usually goes with the coperto. The service is one star because there's no one who talks to you. You get the menu via QR code. Where is the human connection? If you don't care for me then ok but adjust the price accordingly. There's one waiter who was one of the nicest human beings I've ever seen but he is not the trattoria, therefore I won't factore him into the rating. The pasta, although it's average good, is approximately 2€ above the standard price per meal. In Germany we call that audacious. Also this is completely against the Italian culture. Also the boss pressures everyone at the checkout to give a good review (with a NFC token) maybe that's why the reviews are this good. With all that being said: this is nothing short of a clever tourist rip off.

Objectively speaking if you don't care about money you can still get decent Italian food here. For me personally it's outrageous to...

We had lunch at this excellent restaurant on 13.08.2025. On entering the restaurant my wife and I received the warmest of welcomes. The menu gave us a wide range of delicious traditional Sicilian dishes. The staff were awesome. We got lots of much needed help with deciding what to order and found the staff extremely attentive and friendly. The food was what we came for and by Jove was it fantastic. The caponata was amongst the best we have ever eaten. The aubergine/egg plant rolls were utterly delicious. The tuna tartar (helpfully recommended by the lovely fellow who took our order) was outstanding. If I get to choose my last meal I want that tuna tartar as my starter. We then got to the Penne Alla Norma. It was probably one of the best pasta dishes I have ever eaten. My wife is a carb dodger. She really really doesn’t like pasta. She described it as not just delicious but the best pasta dish she has ever eaten. We loved our meal so much we intend to go back tomorrow - she is keen to try other of the pasta dishes on offer. We just hope we can get a table. We cannot recommend this...

I went there based on the google rating (4.8) and walked out disappointed. The staffs were nice. The place can be a little cleaner. My hope on pasta with squid ink topped with sea urchin was set quite high. I’m ok with the price (€18) if the dish offers quality and great taste. Sadly I found neither of those. The busiate(the noodle) was slathered heavily in sauce. At first I thought “wow, how generous! That’s cool, the more the better.” But after a few bites in I learned that there’s such thing as too much sauce. Another mistake was to have it with sea urchin. The sauce completely overpowered the taste of the sea urchin to the point that if you eat it with your eyes closed you wouldn’t notice that it was there at all. Couldn’t even feel its creaminess. Spaghetti carbonara was also a miss and the caponata was so so. Maybe we happened to order the not so great dishes. Maybe their other stuff are tastier. But I’ll never know because I’m not that keen on going back. บุญบาปโดนตก อากู๋นะอากู๋ กินเสร็จเดินออกมารมณ์เสีย...