Ristorante La Bottega di Volpaia Since 1708 — Restaurant in Radda in Chianti

Hello! Headlines for this restaurant: Food-Poison and fast food restaurant style with no soul of Italy. Its the single worst place I have been to for many years, I rather eat at mcdonalds because atleast they have food standards there.

The service was good, and the atmosphere is amazing, so beautiful. I put all the stars to 1 because its simply not ok to provide food which is off/gives you food poison!

Bread was tasteless, how can you provide so gross bread, its a common knowledge to atleast provide bread that tastes like something. I actually got a flashback to when I grew up and in preschool I remember we were served this same tasteless bread but I havnt had it since. Its amazing that I got that same tasteless bread in tuscany on a vineyard from a "michelin" restaurant.

Me and my girlfriend ate here during our stay at Volpaia. The last night of our stay we decided to try out this restaurant. We ordered rabbit with truffle and some meat with aragula together with some first dishes. As some have mentioned before. The meat came out raw(like how can you even serve that?) when we said we wanted medium rare and I could notice the rabbit with truffle tasted really off. Im not a prudent or picky eater but I couldn't finish the dish.

The day after we were driving to como, it took us 8 hours instead of the 5 hours with fever and food poison symptoms. It has ruined our last time of our gorgeous trip and to serve bad food like that cost us a lot of valuable time here in our trip to Italy. I am on day two laying on my hotel room in como exhausted from the food from this restaurant.

Which is sad is that the place and people working at the winery and hotel establishement are so friendly and hospitable in the town of volpaia and that it is ruined by this fast food restaurant is so sad.

We ate at the osteria the night previous and it has a much better tuscan vibe and amazing food , it is so much worth the money with an amazing chef that were personally catering us. Its a bit more pricey but we had an amazing time with food we will remember. Please do not go to this restaurant and save yourself the pain and time of getting food poisoned. Even if you don't get food poisoned, the food is really bad. We tried 4 dishes in total and all of them tasted really bad. Its one thing if it tastes bad but to also give you food poison....

And I know the owner will tell you that everything is fine as he/she did with other reviews that have complained about similar things....

Another thing, we had only had breakfast that day many many hours before we went here. Hence we ordered so much food. So this is the only place and food that gave us food poison.

I will attach an image of the dish that destroyed our holiday in Italy cheers.

######## As a response to Carlas response. Yes I had food poison. Please send me your email details and I will provide proof of how Nordic SOS help centre wanted me to go to emergency room with an ambulance because of the severe symptoms I was having. Its better now but it took away threw days of our trip in italy. I have nothing against you or your restaurant. Its not personal. I simply care about people not having to go through the same thing I did. Its sad you think I have something against you or your restaurant. I dont need compensation. Just please take care of your restaurant and respect the customer and that they are spending lots of money coming to visit Italy and...

La Bottega di volpaia had all the ingredients to be a very special place. A local garden that is used to plant and grow some of the vegetables you eat in the restaurant that is itself wonderfully decorated with a magnificent tree over de tables on the balcony while being on a point view over an epic classical Tuscany landscape. Unfortunately it is the human (lack of) side that ruins the experience. Starting with and episode two months before: me and my girlfriend were so excited do visit "mama Gina's" La Bottega, that we tried to immediately book a table. They would say that It would be enough to simply book it a few days earlier, but when the time came, they wouldn't answer our emails nor would the phone number work. So we arrived not knowing if we could even guarantee a seat on the only day we were going to spend there in Volpaia. We finally came across the daughter of Mama Gina's, and we basically run excited in her direction to explain our happiness of finally being there; only to be greeted with an uncomfortable look and a rispid tone. "OK, we will receive you at 8pm", she said. And so we arrived at the exact time. The restaurant seemed quite empty with only a little more than a couple of tables with customers. When the waitress who received us showed us our table we asked if it couldn't be one closer to the balconys point view, which he replied as already being booked. We found out at the end that no one showed to claim the so called reservation. The dinner was good in regards to the food quality. But the General sense was that we were being rushed on to the next plate constantly... and so we were in fact. Mama Gina's daughter would pass by no saying a single word, not even a regular "Ciao". The kitchen would close at 9h30 pm, but starting at 9pm the waitress crew was already cleaning up all the tables, while we were still having our second course. A really rude and unpleasant procedure. At 10pm we were feeling so unwelcome that we basically felt forced to go and leave. Only one table with customers was left in the restaurant and this ends a really sad and unexpected...

Don’t get me wrong: the food was tasty (not the best we’ve tasted during our week in Tuscany but well prepared and nicely presented). The experience, however, not so much. We had a reservation for 8PM and we came in a bit early, so we decided to take a short walk but we wanted to let the staff know we are already close by, just might run a few minutes late. Without even greeting us, the waiter who seemed like a manager started yelling at us not to stand in the middle of the terrace and stand somewhere else (it was empty and most seats were not taken yet so we didn’t see what the issue was). He wouldn’t even let me start to say what I wanted, assuming I wanted to be seated. After explaining what, he didn’t apologise, and even threw something like “stupid Americans” (funnily enough we are not American at all, not even close). Anyway; this attitude sort of threw me off the track. Further during the evening, it felt like our table was in a grey area that belonged to no waiter in particular, as we always struggled to get any attention. Seemed like they have tables with guests they preferred, explaining everything and being overly nice and friendly with them, while others were there just to fill the space and the bank account. We tried the grilled aubergine with mint, it was nice enough. For mains we had ravioli with ricotta and spinach, and tagliatelle with truffles. The pasta was really nice. As a dessert, tiramisu (too sweet?) and pana cotta with berry sauce, which was very tasty. Very strange evening, after so many nice experiences we’ve had in Tuscany, we had to rate this one down because of the attitude of the main staff. Felt like they didn’t care, if we decided not to stay they could easily get new guests eager for a table: apparently the restaurant receives much hype; showing off signed cards from Sting and Barack Obama, both supposedly being on friendly terms...