Ai Lumi — Restaurant in Trapani

If in Trapani or surrounds and in need of a quality, local meal, fish lover or not, Ai Lumi is A DEFINITE MUST!

First the fresh, warm, local bread with sesame seeds came on an old wooden cutting board, then the first bottle of local Nero d' Avola (Gazzera - €17) and our antipasti (appetizers). Salvatore had the Calamaretti Fritti (tiny octopus, deep fried - €9), my wife and Fabio had the Tagliere di Salumi e Formaggi (sliced salami, cured meats and cheeses - €8), and I the Insalata Caprese (fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes and basil - €8). The calamaretti looked good, the salami and cheese platters were enormous and delightful, and my Caprese divine. Off to a great start!

Now it was time for our main courses. Being a fisherman, Salvatore went with the Frittura di Pescatore (Fried Seafood - €12), three small local battered and fried fish, several rings of calamari, and a couple gamberetti (very large shrimp that look like mini-lobsters).

My wife's choice was the Gnocchi in Crema di Pistacchio (all of our main courses were €12), a generous portion of perfectly cooked potato dumplings coated, not soaking, in a mild, creamy, savory crushed pistachio and pana (heavy cream) sauce.

Fabio ordered the Risotto ai Funghi, a large pile of arborio rice which had been slowly stirred, mixing it with the fresh porcini mushrooms, white wine, chicken or vegetable stock, herbs and spices. I did not taste it and Fabio said that it was good, but said that "we could do as well if not better". Italians in general and Sicilians in particular take their meals very seriously and are proud, good cooks, so I was not surprised by his comment. He savored every bite and cleaned his plate, so it was obviously good.

I went local with the Caserecce al Pesto Trapanese, a handmade double-strand pasta about two inches long, rolled and twisted into an S-shape (not Busiate, another traditional Trapanese pasta that looks like an old-style spiral telephone cord), then tossed in a local pesto sauce made with crushed, fresh tomato, basil, almonds, garlic and EVO, then mixed with slices of grilled, sauteed eggplant and topped with toasted breadcrumbs and grated pecorino cheese. It was absolutely delicious as served, not needing any added grated cheese, salt or pepper like many restaurants you may go to.

Then it was time for dessert. The Tiramisu al Limone (€5 - lemon tiramisu) sounded delightful, so my wife and I, being stuffed to the gills after a great meal and a week with Sicilian relatives ("mangia, mangia"), shared a generous slice. It was creamy, sweet, light and a perfect ending to a wonderful meal. Our cousins had the Cassata Siciliana (€5), a type of pie-looking cake (pie does not exist in Italy, the closest thing being "crostata") made with sponge cake, sweet ricotta cheese, and fruit.

As I said, the bill came to just €150 (before tip) for four people with three courses each (antipasto, primo and dessert), digestivi (amaro and limoncello), caffe, water, and two bottles of Nero d' Avola for an extremely reasonable total of €37.50 each. You will find few, if any, Michelin Guide restaurants where you will pay this little for such an excellent comparable meal, making Ai Lumi a definite TravelValue if visiting Trapani or Northwestern Sicily.

CombatCritic Gives Ai Lumi 9 Bombs Out Of 10 ... More Bombs Are Better!

Nine Bombs Equates To: OOH-RAH!

Translation for Civilians: "U.S. Marine Response To A Verbal Greeting Or As An Expression Of Enthusiasm"

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I have been working in the restaurant business and i hope this review helps in two ways:

1 That management and the chef improve their game .

2 preventing people to end their holidays with this disgusting bad taste., like we did

We forget to reserve elsewhere so we went impulsive and that is how we ended up in this restaurant .

The prices seemed okay at first, but then you see the portion sizes. Which in hindsight is a positive as the dishes where beyond bad in taste or in structure.

After the starter which was not only super dry and left a bitter after taste. I kept hoping the main course could make a comeback for the night but helas.

Not only did i have to wait for a grilled sword fish, which to my knowledge if it was fresh. Should only take ten minutes, but for them it took more than 30 min. Comically they gave my starter again first, but eventually came after another 10 min.

Instead of apologising because my wife finished her diner already, threw my plate like he was the only one working in the restaurant and couldn’t be bothered.

Mind you there were at the least 5 waiters in front with three tables empty and could have easily handled by one maybe two people (if it was full)

If the menu says grilled fish steak (swordfish), i expect the grill marks to be evenly dark and not grey and dull like it was straight out of the freezer.

The only reason i finished my plates was because I didn’t want my wife to feel worse. We ended up here, partly because of her and tried to make the best out of it. (But she knew the truth because she didn’t like any of hers as well).

Our neighbours that were from Italy seemed more than disappointed and disgusted, they didn’t finish their plate. Couldn’t blame them, they somehow managed to get something so bad that the odour was sickening.

I can continue and give more details but then i need to make a whole webpage.

I expect the restaurant to brush off these claims. They can do so but I don’t see them do well with this in the future.

Probably they get some friends in the neighbourhood to artificially boost their score as they seem to do.

Good lick to all who...

I CANNOT recommend this restaurant to ANYONE. I don't understand how they have such good ratings everywhere. I feel like they are scamming people with all their old "Michelin Guide" stickers on their window, the newest one being from 2018...so quite old and the food clearly had no relation to the stickers.

We went to eat here on our last night of our holiday, because of the cute terrace and the menu sounded good...but the food was so bad that it ruined our whole nights mood.

The starters were fine, but the mains that we were really excited about where the worst we've had this year.

We had the grilled king prawns, which cost 24€. Definitely over priced for a dish that had only 4 prawns and a piece of lemon on it. The price could've been forgive if the dish would've been good, but no. The prawns were raw and not cleaned, they all still had the gut that is full of feces. And because they were raw the taste was bad, and the texture was so gross that I could feel it on my tongue for the rest of the night.

Our other main was the veal with the blueberry sauce, this one was 28€. The dish could've been tasty, but the plate was drowning in the blueberry sauce so you couldn't even see what you were supposed to be eating. All you could taste was the blueberry, even when we tried to scrape the sauce of, the veal was pointless on the plate because you couldn't only taste the sauce.

We first tried really hard to stay positive and just eat the food we were given....but in the end we realized there's no point in paying almost 30€ per dish for such bad food, both dishes being so bad that we couldn't finish them. We told the waiter that the mains are so bad that we are not paying for them and they barely even apologized. We only paid for the starters (because they were okay) and left to eat a pizza in a different restaurant.

They could've saved the situation with good customer service, but no, they just decided not to care...

Like I said, cannot recommend this...