PARTICOLARE di Siena — Restaurant in Siena

The experience was disappointing and frustrating leaving us with a bitter after taste. Besides the food that here and there lacked taste or was not good enough for a prestigious restaurant, which is something that we could have gotten over with, the reaction of the staff was the cherry on the top. The food is overrated, too bad to be called fine dining, lacking essence and genius. I have called a day prior to make a reservation for 8 people. I was told to reserve via The Fork because"it is better for me". What does this mean? On their website the tasting menu 4 courses were 60€, on the fork 55€. The host greeds us and welcomes us to the table. It is the last time.when we see him before our argument. Fast forward to the actual food, the menu is only with fish, without letting us know is just fish. One of us found bones inside the meat, for the appetizer. The next dishes are everything but spectacular, plates are returned only touched to the kitchen, nobody cares if we are fine, if sth is wrong. Here come the problem, one of us writes a bad review while being there. The host makes his enterance back to our table: where are you from? Us: Romania. Big mistake, huge, he come a few moments later, having the audacity to ask if the person who wrote the review is at our table.Of course, we say yes. He scoulds us and becomes very angry, informing the kitchen and the staff that the Romanians are complaining. He argued that we did not inform him about what was bothering us. Did he come to check on us? Did the staff cared the we are sending the plates back full? No! Me and my boyfriend are working in hospitality in prestigious hotel chains around the world. Hospitality is a teadious, hard and frustrating industry and when guests leave bad reviews it really hurts. But you can NEVER react the way the host did: to have the guts to ask where we are from, like the nationality is the one that counts, to get mad and come to confront us about the review, throw bad looks in our directions and so on. The bill was higher, his way of taking his revenge. There was a nice waitress that defended the restaurant and the staff with dignaty and maybe the host or manager, whatever he is, should learn from her. The evening ended with him telling us that we are just Romanians, how dare we have a bad opinion about his restaurant. He was racist, mean and in the wrong. Shame on you as a person and on...

I’ve never left a bad write-up before, but this was probably the worst food we’ve ever had, anywhere. It was, generously, elevated hospital food, but really it was hospital food with pretensions. The Michelin and other reviews raved about Particolare’s local and organic ingredients, some apparently grown on site. But the kitchen and garden must have burned down between those reviews and now. Everything tasted like it had been purchased in Walmart’s frozen food isle, prepped months ago in an industrial kitchen that churns out 20,000 packaged meals a day, preserved for travel, sat waiting in a mini fridge, and (only partially) reheated in a microwave. The prep amounted to either over-boiling or over-steaming every ingredient in water— nothing was grilled, baked, stewed, or otherwise interestingly cooked, and nothing was fresh— then arranging it on a plate the way someone might who once saw a picture of fine dining, but had never actually tasted food. Everything had the flavor and mouthfeel of wilted cardboard, except when it had the texture and taste of a balloon. The ingredients, which on the menu sounded like cool, imaginative combinations, weren’t married in any way; they just sat together individually on a plate like sad little islands. For instance, lobster with rhubarb, lovage, and tempeh was a rubbery frozen lobster tail with a couple cubes of gelatinous canned rhubarb plated alongside a slice of wet hospital carrot (like the deli garnish on top of gefilte fish) and some cubes of yellow beet (maybe? It had zero taste so actually idk), with a smear of what was supposed to be tempeh but I think was marmite. I guess the salt bomb of that smear was supposed to make up for the total and complete blandness of everything else. We had four dishes and each was worse and more tasteless than the last, and simultaneously over-cooked, undercooked, and cold. The decor was self-consciously Cool Budget Hotel (everything mass-produced, factory pseudo-midcentury, picture frames Ikea). The soundtrack was Maroon 5, which should probably tell you everything you need to know. And when the bill came, they’d double charged us for several dishes, which was weird because we barely ate the ones we ordered. (They quickly fixed the bill, though, and the waitress was very nice). Find a good trattoria and please don’t waste your precious time or tastebuds. They regenerate, but not...

I don’t even know what to say about this place. For the price you pay the food is underwhelming and not that great. We did the chef’s choice for €90/pp. Started out sitting in a bright area with direct view of the kitchen (can see through glass doors). Service began with a stoic server that provided no pleasantries, which is fine but makes the meal feel very…stern. However, she was professional. Halfway through the meal she dipped and the manager (I think?) ended up serving us. No biggie, but for the price point the lack of comms was strange. Food was consistently underwhelming; octopus pasta was overly salty and octopus mushy. Second pasta dish was good but nothing to write home about. Bread was decent and so was the Sicilian olive oil. Shrimp dish was probably the best out of them all. The main pork dish (cooked in its own fat, no less!) was no bueno. Again, too salty and not soft as advertised. We decided to bring our food home at the end, and I saw one of the workers in the kitchen lick her fingers after she placed our food in boxes. Wine was good, but manager forgot to let us taste it before pouring the glass. Then he said “you can try it if you want”. We just chuckled… can’t make this stuff up. I understand it was late night but imho not worth visiting this establishment. Just...