Osteria i Birbi — Restaurant in Perugia

We had a wonderful evening at "Osteria i Birbi," which boasted a charming, rustic ambiance that perfectly captured the spirit of the city. The service was excellent—our waiters were attentive, courteous, and very friendly. The menu featured a compelling selection of unique and sophisticated dishes as well as a great selection of delicious wines. To start, we chose the Zucchini Flower Tempura with ricotta, olives, and a buffalo mozzarella cream tomato sauce. For our primi courses, we selected the Tortelli stuffed with "Pappa al Pomodoro" and the Taglierini with black seasonal truffle. Our main course was an Argentinian sirloin cut with rosemary oil, served with a side of ratatouille. The tortelli and the steak were particular highlights. We finished with two desserts: the Bavarian cream with apricots, peach mousse, passion fruit, crumble, and traditional balsamic vinegar drops, and the Fruit compote with ricotta cheese foam, almonds, and cocoa grue. Unfortunately, these didn't quite live up to the rest of the meal. While the food was truly excellent, we felt the prices were...

The venue is wonderful being an in a properly conserved ground floor of an historical building downtown Perugia. However I had the feeling that the restaurant is undecided with regards what it wants to be: a high end one that should have much better attitude and service or maybe a local rustic then with more down to earth dishes. Instead the service is cold and detached, by the answers that the owner gives to some comments I assume also rude, the dishes are pretentious with a desire to be refined but they are, at least in our experience: too cold for really appreciating the taste (tortelli di patate laid flat on a large cold plate, here it shows the desire to be high end, were stone cold by the time they arrived at the table), over complicated by using too many, although high quality, ingredients that cover each other and generally taste bland. Price is on the high range for what it actually is, but is low for what...

Mediocre. We felt rushed through, food was ok (good pasta), but overpriced. Truffle wasn’t as good as we expected. ‘Vino della casa’ was EUR 15 for a bottle. Nice quality but not what the table wine should be. Felt like a tourist trap rotating the tables as quickly as possible; checking every minute whether we already finished and trying to clear the table when we were not.

This was our experience, doesn’t seem to align with the other reviews but compared to other places in Perugia this was a...