Trattoria del Buongustaio — Restaurant in Syracuse

The worst service and worst food, we have tried in Sicily. We arrived at 21:20 after a long day, and according to Google, the restaurant closes at 23:30. We got the menu and 1 and a half minute later the waiter asked for our order, but we said we needed a bit more time to decide. He replied in a very rude and inappropriate manner, saying the kitchen would close at 22. We insisted that we still needed time to decide what to pick. Then, I went inside to wash my hands but didn’t found the toilet. The other waiter inside shouted at me in a quite aggressive and impolite way: “Mister! What do you want?” I said I was looking for the toilet. He gave me the wrong directions within that not-too-big inside area. When he saw I didn’t find it, he shouted again: “Mister!!! I told you the toilet was on the left (which was obviously not true). When I got back to our table, literally 1 minute later the first waiter came right back forcing us to choose. The food arrived quite quickly, too hot, not fresh and a bit even disgusting. If you know what not fresh seafood tastes like, that is the flavor the food has in this restaurant. The shrimps became approx. 2 mm tiny sized in the pasta due to several reheats, I assume. I couldn’t finish it because after 5 minutes of eating it, I got an instant stomach ache. The food itself was even though better than the rude service provided by the two young guys, the waiters. Definitely...

Overall good food, decent quality and service. I strongly recommend to try the "zuppa di cozze", mussels were delicious and the sauce deserved to be cleaned up with the bread; go "scarpetta"! First dishes are tasty and portions are generous: "pasta alla norma" and "tagliatelle con pistacchio e gamberi" are worth! Finally we had "polpo e calamari alla Luciana", that wasn't of my taste, but I was also almost full so I may be biased, anyway the taste of onions was too strong and did cover the seafood! We did try the house white wine, it wasn't bad but I could sense that it was a bit water-ish; last thing is that we had to wait almost 1h before getting the starter, but after that first and second dishes came one after the other! I would recommend the place is you are not in a hurry and you're very hungry and looking for good traditional...

We would only give this restaurant 1 star due to the unpleasant experience we had. Main course was reasonably good but the final course dessert had put a bad taste in our mouth. Tiramisu costs 4 euro on the menu and we ordered 1 only. Instead we were charged for 2 (8 euro) simply because we requested for an extra plate. It came out on the plate cut into 2 tiny pieces. 8 euro is a small amount and we can afford to pay, however it's the principle of dishonesty of the owner that put us off. This is the first unpleasant encounter we had dining out in Sicily since our arrival. We are seasoned diners at all sorts of restaurants, from high end to simple food. We didn’t appreciate this restauranteur that knew very well what we ordered and yet charged us extra!! Given our experience, we would not recommend any diners to...