Da Giancarlo Ristorante — Restaurant in Pula

Really sorry but we could not recomend based on this visit, and such a shame as our host we are staying with spoke so highly.

Our meal it's self was OK, though our shared starter of seafood pasta seemed to have more shells than than the actual seafood.

What we noted here, and you need to bear in mind this is a big restaurant, is there appears to be two kitchen's, one for pizzas and one for alacarte. The food coming out pizza kitchen looked lovely and we wished we had ordered pizzas rather than alacarte.

What we didnt like was a lack of attention to detail on the service side and the time it took for service with the alacarte. 1 - we were never offered a bread basket. I'm sure if we had asked it would have been provided but you should not have to ask. 2 - when our starter arrived it was brought to us on a serving trolly. That trolly then sat at the side of our table for the duration of the meal and as we progressed through the evening it become a distribution point for the staff to place and distribute plates and cutlery around the tables in the surrounding area. Why was it not removed after our service and why did staff not think that customers would not want a service point for cutlery to be right next to their table. Again I'm sure if we'd mentioned this it would have been moved but you shouldn't need to ask, the staff should do this without thinking. 3 - next to us was a family group of adults and children. There was 8. Their food all came out at different times and the from initial service of the first two meals to the other meals was 30 minutes. Those first served, that was one adult and one child, finally had to eat before the others were served as their meals were becoming cold and when you have young children, one with food and the others not, you can guess how difficult it is for the parents to deal with. They were far from impressed and we watched this all unfold whilst waiting for our own meals.

In summary, as you will no doubt guess, lack of attention to detail was the issue and the overall experience of our first evening meal out whilst staying in Pula was extremely...

This restaurant was recommended, so our party of seven duly booked for evening meal. None of us hold back when spending so we all ordered what we wanted, together with copious wine and sides. Four of our party received excellent meals (tuna, whole sea bass, red mullet) but these all came out of the kitchen at different times. We were pre warned about this, so were accommodating.

However, those that ordered seafood mixed grill reported that it was over-cooked and not of the same eating quality as the meals that had appeared earlier. The person who had the worst made mention of this at the time and the waiter immediately took it away, saying that he would ask the owner to credit it from the bill.

He came back and said in no uncertain terms that “the chef says it is fine, so the owner says you will have to pay”. However, we clearly saw that the waiter just simply asked the owner - the chef wasn’t even consulted by anyone.

We felt grossly insulted by this attitude - as though they saw us as tourists who they weren’t going to see again, so were going to shrug their shoulders. At that point our whole evening was ruined - we were all deflated and the joy de vivre we had up to that point just evaporated. In silence we paid and left under a cloud.

The sad thing is that the dish in question was just €17.00, so to make the gesture of removing from the bill would hardly have caused them financial hardship. And for what? Stubbornness? Proving a point? Whatever the owner’s motivation, if the customer feels their meal was substandard, why should they be expected to pay for it?

Our bill came to €350 before tip. If the owner had been more reasonable we’d have tipped at least €50 and retuned again for similar. Well, we’ve got news for you, Mrs Owner - up to that point we were quite happy to come back more than once, but hell could freeze over before we would now step through...

Best seafood meals had in Pula.

We ate here twice because the first meal was just so delicious. The staff are attentive and friendly and the restaurant is well run. On the first night we had mixed seafood starter which is an array of different types of fish in oil/vinger, for mains we both had the seafood spaghetti. We absolutely loved it, and for dessert we had the crème caramel.

On the second night we had the mixed seafood starter again, chefs special spaghetti, clams spaghetti, a fresh fish cooked with olives - no space for dessert.

We struggled to call to make a reservation as our calls were not going through but we got a table on both nights, on the second night which was a Sunday evening we had to wait about 40mins which we obviously were willing to do.

Would...