Erbaluigia — Restaurant in Pisa

Start with the ambience: I gave a two, but maybe even that's too good, it's only higher than a one because they had two not terrible paintings and fresh flowers. What didn't I like? Above all the paper cranes hanging from strings and the strange bicycle installation on top of the rooms. But also the ugly grey tones on the extremely plain walls. Why no tablecloth? Also in the other room there was a large English speaking group, one member of which had a horrible braying laugh which would rise higher than the passable music, old-timey jazz.

The service was up and down: the sommelier very good, fluent English, knowledgeable about different wines, but the waitress, the real waitress, well, she had a look, quite a look, but her english wasn't there. the busboy was almost unbelievably handsome, and said "thank you" whenever he took anything. it took a very long time for the food to come. It took a long time for the check. However when I did say that the Puntarelle were way too salty, too one note, the waitress did immediately offer to replace it.

Now, onto the food. There was foccaccia that was too salty and soggy, but still I like foccaccia, so a 6, and there was a terrific sourdough, a 9, therefore the bread gets a 7.5.

The amuse bouche were three fried green sticks in horseradish mayo. I expected greasy fresh fried, but they had been toasted, almost, like a snack, and it contrasted nicely with the tangy mayo. Good start, I was thinking. 8/10.

And then came the sheep tartare, and I did say wow when I bit into it - a line of dark red meat with anchovies and herbs on vaguely chinese plating - wow, this was great, I wanted to bring you here. It just kept surprising, up and down. Sheepy, but just a little. Like a raw gyro I thought. Yum. Sheep Tartare 9/10.

Then came the main, a pie of pheasant and apricots, with the side, puntarelle with anchovy. Next to the cute (little) pie was an onion with what looked to be some balsamic on it. I knew subconsciously that this was going to be bad.

The puntarelle was crunchy, almost like celery, a fantastic ingredient, but the anchovies came in way, way way too strong, covering every other flavor up. Salt bombed. 2/10

The pie? At first I thought: this is bad. It just didn't click, some very dense wild game with the tangy cooked apricots. And the onion it was served with was tragic, I had to saw through it with my knive. Onion: 1/10. Towards the end, the pie started maybe to taste good again. In retrospect this was probably me lying to myself to feel better. It's not really that bad, was it. I think so, yes: 4/10

I forgot the wine. That was another good part of the meal, a sparkling rose from Emilia with a dancing acid taste, mildew and sunshine from the 1930s. Wine: 9.

Right, the replacement for the puntarelle: the salad, really a wild herb salad, with a vinaigrette dressing served. This was more "interesting" than "delicious" basically all bittery and herby elements. Some crunch ones. Not enough...

Very disappointing for a Michelin recommended restaurant.

When entering the restaurant, there was a strong incense smell and when getting sat in the back garden, there was incense everywhere to keep the mosquitos away but the smell diminished our dinning experience.

We took the 6 courses tasting menu and the experience was mid. The food was average, very big portions in the beginning and smaller portions in the end.

Very long wait before getting the first course, the appetizer came after 40 minutes of being seated, no amuse bouche were offered.

The service was professional and friendly but was lacking in some way. We were not introduced into the menu and the waitress just asked if we were ready to order. We had to ask the waitress to speak about the menu and specials of the day.

They changed the utensils at each service which was pleasant.

No water service, we had to ask for water everytime our glasses/bottles of water were empty. Also we had to ask every time for more wine and made our meal cold while waiting for the wine.

Bread came without olive oil, we had to ask for it.

Most of the food was ok, the beef tartar was way over seasoned. Everything else was well seasoned.

The wine pairing was the most deceiving. Half pours and we're charged when asking for more wine (noticed at the end when getting the bill) when most of the service took too long that we had to ask for second pours to enjoy it with the actual dish it's supposed to be paired with.

The dishes had a great presentation and my husband and I loved the micro greens/flowers on top on the dishes.

It seems like the restaurant is smoke friendly, if you want to smoke and spread second hand smoke to children, you're welcome to in the second section of the garden. They gladly moved us inside after we complained about it.

I think Erbaluigia still has a lot of work to do in terms of quality of service and policies they choose to enforce in order to provide excellent quality to get to the next level.

This restaurant makes you realize how great the dining experience we usually get and turns out we usually take them for granted when compared to a restaurant like Erbaluigia.

The service from our sommelier was great. We had high expectations for this restaurant but we feel cheated and will not recommend this restaurant to our friends, unfortunately...

Our bill was discounted by 7€, but I feel that they didn't really apologize and didn't own their...

The overall experience was fine.

I’ll start with the positives: • The atmosphere was nice; the lighting, paintings, and music were all good. • The lamb tartare was superb, both in the quality of the meat and the spices they used. • They have a nice selection of wines. • The taste of most courses was quite balanced, but…

Time for the negatives: • The codfish was terribly salty. I wasn’t able to eat even a third of it. • We received the menu only around 10 minutes after being seated, and it took another 20+ minutes to take our order after that. It’s true that the place was quite crowded, but it was still unpleasant to be ignored like that.

And a neutral point: • Most of what we ate was incredibly similar to what our Eastern European grandmas were cooking (maybe that’s the influence of one of the owners, who has an Eastern European name). Except for the codfish, the food was quite nice, just not what I was expecting. So neither...