Syrenuse — Restaurant in Sorrento

I never thought Id write a google review, let alone one this extensive, but I have to warn the people of Sorrento.

This review serves as a cautionary warning to any visitor of Sorrento that they should NOT eat at this restaurant.

First of all the atmosphere was very average, if anything a little bad purely because of the tightness of the tables and the inability to walk anywhere without squeezing through. My drink was almost knocked over three times.

The service was fine, they were generally polite but the waiting time not so much. I could’ve watched the directors cut of the Avatar TWICE just for our appetisers to come out. Mind you, it was simply, prosciutto on top of melon, a salad and two bruschettas. The wait for the main was even longer, about 25-30 minutes. For a restaurant with such a large amount of servers, not once had they reminded us of any meals or cleaned up the crowdedness of our table.

The food was perhaps the most depressing part of this restaurant. I tasted what was the most dull food I have ever experienced in my years of eating.

My starter, which was prosciutto and rockmelon lived up to the name of being ROCKmelon. It was unripe and had two slices of prosciutto for what was almost a whole melon. Not to mention a random salad alongside which offered the perfect amount of pointlessness to the dish.

My main which was chicken alongside chips and salad. To give a description of the chicken breast, just visualise grabbing a handful of sand from the beach nearby and chewing. This was the driest chicken breast I’ve ever eaten, not to mention the lack of seasoning. The fries and salad that came along with it were fine. Of course I expect as much, but the main part of the dish offered nothing. Did I mention the chicken was dry?

For my friends they spotted a lovely lock of hair in their salad, also reporting no flavour, and if anything the hair probably was the most flavourful part of the dish. No dressing on the salads beforehand, vinegar had to be asked for. My brother was so desperate for any fraction of flavour on his club sandwich, he resorted to dousing it in balsamic vinegar.

All in all, you’re better off walking down the street further and getting yourself a box of chicken nuggets from the fast food restaurant if you’re that desperate for food.

We weren’t expecting a Michelin star level meal, but for £109 you’d assume that your meal...

EXPECT BAD SERVICE. This was the worst service I’ve ever experienced in my life. Here visiting with my friends (one of whom is gluten free). The menu says explicitly in many places that they offer gluten free pasta and we clarified with our server who told us she could pick any pasta dish with a sauce and replace it with gluten free spaghetti. Food came out and our friend (who always tests a few bites before continuing) felt that the pasta tasted too good to be gluten free. We all tried it and decided to check with the server who insisted it was gluten free but ended asked the chef and came back and told us there was a mistake and her pasta was NOT in fact gluten free. They offered to remake it correctly but of course the damage had been done and even the slightest bit of gluten is detrimental for her. We ask them to comp the dish and they call over the manager who is an old Italian man that proceeds to accuse us of only caring about money and tells my friend her allergy isn’t real then sarcastically asks if he should drive her to the hospital (this was just a fraction of the long conversation). He completely belittled her and she left before she got sick so we could wrap up at the restaurant. We get the check and our original server brings us complementary limoncello which is when I stop him to explain how disgusting and embarrassing his manager’s behavior was. I’m not sure if this is simply a difference between European service norms and American services norms? But I told him how in no situation should a restaurant treat a customer like that after making such a real and serious mistake but he simply nodded and walked away so not quite sure if the message got across. Anyways, beware of this staff and their rude tendencies. I will say that the night was going well and drinks+apps were good up...

WARNING: this place is a definition of tourist trap!!!

I have a rule of never giving a place 1 star. Running a restaurant is a nightmare and my thinking is if I dont like it I just dont go back, but I dont post 1 star reviews.

Amongst all the reviews I have written on google, this is the FIRST restaurant I am giving 1 star. Service here is non-existent. Waiters need extensive training. The one that served us had major attitude. When we sat down, the table was not set up, and waiter set it up with few plates but no forks. He did not give us cloth napkins and when my husband asked for it he gave him 1 (!) cloth napkin!! The rest of us were just sitting there, haha. But of course they did charge us "cover fee" for all of us, even though we didnt get any covers and had to ask for forks, haha.

As we sat there waiting for food, which by the way was 40 minutes, waiting service was a disaster: wrong tables served wrong food, dropped trays, waiters standing with food not knowing where to take it, drinks sitting at the counter ready to be served with ice melting.

The food was okay. Liked fried anchovies and pizza, the rest was salty, acidic and pasta was not al dente. Like ruining pasta in Italy is a different level.

Overall, this place is full because of the good location and they dont really care because they know more gullible tourists will be coming no matter how badly they work. The reason they have a people waiting outside is purely due to location and has nothing to do with service or food, do not believe anyone who tells...