Criscito'S — Restaurant in Praiano

I'd like to begin this review by saying that I had an amazing two weeks in Italy with my girlfriend. We went to Praiano, Taormina, and San Vito Lo Capo. Truly incredible experience all around.

However, our brief visit to (a highly recommended) Criscito's was incredibly awful.

We knew something was wrong when, within minutes of being seated, the waiter was in a very abrasive argument with two ladies at the table next to us. The reason? They just wanted salads, but the owner wouldn't let them order salads without also ordering a pizza. Elderly ladies, being treated like children.

Finally, one of the women went into the restaurant (we were sitting outside) and started screaming, "what is going on here?!" The owner ultimately relented and gave her the salad without pizza.

Then came our turn. Despite the turmoil with the table to us, we stuck around and ordered a bottle of wine, an appetizer, and two pizzas. The place was said to be the best for pizza in all of Praiano.

The waiter came out, let us try the wine, and this is where the trouble began. We didn't like the wine. To be clear, we're not picky eaters or super snobby winos. We just really thought the wine was bad. It tasted like grapes and vinegar. So, we told the waiter that we'd like a different bottle of wine.

Chaos. We hear the waiter go inside, tell the owner what had happened, and he immediately started shouting in Italian. Clearly, we had offended him. I looked at my girlfriend and said, "this is about to get ugly."

A few minutes later, a different waiter came out, carrying the original bottle of wine. His name was Antonio. And this is what Antonio had to say, "you ordered the wine, you have to drink it and pay for it."

I just started laughing. My girlfriend was shocked. Calling the discourse that ensued comical or satirical wouldn't do it justice. It was simply absurd.

We started by saying that, no, in fact we don't have to drink it. He conceded that point, but then said, regardless of anything, we have to pay for it. We refused. A game of, "yes you do," and, "no I don't," was played. Ridiculous. I asked to speak with the owner, but was told he doesn't speak English and Antonio handles this sort of stuff.

Ultimately, he went inside, talked to the owner, and came back to tell us that we could have the wine as a gift. We said thank you and he went back inside, only to return a minute or two later to tell us that we should finish our water and leave.

Adding insult to injury, he made us pay for the water. In fairness, we did learn that this is customary in Italy.

Thus, this review is not an indictment on their food. I'm sure the food is amazing. But, if you're like me, when spending the money to travel to Italy, you want to be treated well by the restaurants you visit, which is what happened everywhere else we went in Praiano. This list includes Che Bonta, La Strada, La Brace, Il Pirata and La Moressa. All great spots and far more worthy of your money...

My girlfriend and I came here 2 hours before closing, the menu seemed promising both price and food-wise. The only thing we had read prior to this was that service might be a bit slow.

We got seated and was okay, as we were prepared for slow service, but what followed was sadly sloppier service than we had expected (although one of the waiters were super sweet when you got a hold of him and s nice guy to talk to, he forgot a lot of things during the dinner). For example, we had to ask for the menu about 5 minutes after being seated, and had to ask twice to make an order.

The food was sadly not up to par with the price either, rather bland and didn't have that much going on. We did kinda expect it with the first dish since we both craved and ordered the Fried Food Mix("Fritto Goloso") and you can't do toooo much with that normally. But the "Fantasie Dell'orto" which was the grilled vegetable plate and the "Cacciatora" pizza were just not good enough. The best things were the grilled eggplant and the limoncello(which actually was really really good)

A bit disappointed but no hard feelings, the place was cosy and it might turn into something better in the future. If I would go again I'd get the superpizza one for two or more. That looked better and might be the dish they...

Criscito’s has a really nice ambiance, and we enjoyed our dinner despite some minor hiccups. It is in a nice location, with an amazing view, and even though it’s right next to the road, visiting in the evening it was not very busy and still felt super peaceful.

We ate the grilled vegetable dish (which was quite nice, especially the eggplant!), the tasty fried food dish (which was ok - two of the tasters were delicious but the others were quite oily and a little bland) and we had the Cacciatora (a mushroom and Parmesan pizza that was a little too soft and had not much flavour). Some of the other food options did look tasty, unfortunately we did not get to try them.

The service was a little slow - we were seated and then almost forgotten about. It could have just been busy, and the staff were really nice and friendly, it just took some time to get their attention. I enjoyed our evening but I will not...