Bar Centrale — Restaurant in Riomaggiore

Food Rating: 3.7/5

Pasta: (taglioni Ragu) chewy but mixed well with the tomato paste. Meat was poorly cooked (canned meat from convenience store)

Drink Rating: 4/5

Coke: absolutely upset my stomach. Unless you want yourself on the toilet with your stomach gassed up, avoid the coke and the ragu combo!

Service Rating: 15/5

The man in charge of this restaurant is an S tier finesser. He has earned a masters degree in the art of baiting. Despite being fully aware of these ingenious tactics, I too fell for his tricks. But first allow me to explain what I mean by this. Upon my friend ordering a very popular soft drink known in this region of Italy as “coco,” my table of 7 was almost immediately left with a very sneaky question by our waiter of “how many?” Despite this question on the surface seeming quite common and unharmful after dining for the next half hour I learned the true dark meaning of this simple 2 word trigger. Again and again my table was manipulated into ordering more cuisines and beverages despite not fully consenting. This owner knew exactly what he was doing and yet his deceptive nature was too powerful for 7 closest friends and I too overcome. I would recommend this classy spot smack down in the heart of cinque terre if you care to experience a world class magician, some mid tier food, and a stellar location.

Location: 4.9/5

Not overlooking the beautiful Genoa Sea but that might be too much to ask for. Can be quite romantical at night. Downtown area directly on the main strip of the city,...

We had one of the worst dining experiences we can remember at this restaurant — a real tourist trap.

From the start, things went downhill. For the starters, we ordered the fried codfish and the swordfish salad. The codfish was clearly frozen, under-fried, very dry, and not crispy at all. The “swordfish salad” was extremely sour and didn’t taste like swordfish — we’re quite sure it wasn’t.

The main courses were just as disappointing. The rabbit stew tasted like it had been sitting in a freezer for far too long and then reheated in a microwave — bland, dry, and lifeless. The shrimp dish was inedible; we couldn’t even remove the shrimp from their shells, which made us doubt how fresh they were in the first place.

To make matters worse, the staff were unhelpful and completely indifferent. We didn’t finish any of our dishes, and nobody bothered to ask if something was wrong or if we needed anything. The lack of care or attention summed up the whole experience.

The only thing that was remotely okay was the wine, which was decent but nothing special. For all this, we paid 110 euros, which felt outrageous given the quality of both the food and service.

Overall, this was a thoroughly disappointing meal and a complete waste of money. We strongly advise avoiding this place — there are many better restaurants nearby that actually serve fresh food and care about...

Food: the ragu tasted like water mixed with beef, there was zero flavour, which is a shame because the pasta itself tasted nice, but there was zero flavour in the sauce Service: terrible customer service from the team, heard nothing more than a grunt from them each time we spoke to them. Took forever to get the bill (used to a long wait time in Europe, but this was far too long for staff that were standing around chatting to one another) to the point we got up to ask for it ourselves. The waitress then grunted and told us to go to the front desk to get it. Atmosphere: violinists were playing beautiful music down the street when the owner came out and yelled STOP to them so loudly. Everyone stopped and stared. Had we not already ordered our meals we would have left. He continued to complain that their “sounds” were rubbish and that his playlist was better. It made us extremely uncomfortable and we felt bad for the violinists playing the beautiful music as they packed up their stuff and left due to the owner yelling at them.

I will never return to this restaurant again for the food or service. It is exactly what I would expect a restaurant owned by an American to taste and act like. Extremely...