Megusta - Ristorante di pesce — Restaurant in Ugento

Disappointing and very poor value for money.

TLDR - We paid €178* for 4 adults who ate 1 (miserly) dish each plus 2 plates of (overpriced) kids pasta and 2 (disappointingly small) fritture miste. We drank one bottle of rose and had 4 amari. Overall it felt like really poor value for money.

A difficult thing with somewhere like Torre San Giovanni is that it's hard to separate the tourist traps from the just plain poor, to the really great places.

We were walk-ins for this place - last minute decision to eat out. They kindly organised a table for us inside as they had no space outside.

The maitre d' (who I suspect was also the owner) made a big thing out of how fresh all of her food was when she gave us the menus. This felt like a bit of overselling and wasn't particularly reassuring.

In general, the service was satisfactory and the food was also satisfactory, it was all just entirely not worth the money or the size of the portions.

This experience can be summed-up by what happened when I requested some parmesan for my pasta. It was brought in a tiny dish with a tiny spoon...the tiny dish contained maximum 3 teaspoons of grated cheese. It was so miserly and not in any way in-keeping with the flashy, upmarket image the venue projects. You will eat better, pay less and be more satisfied by many other places in Torre San Giovanni before you need to try this one.

*A footnote to this is that we paid €190 cash. We were brought €2 in change instead of €12. When we pointed this out we were met with effusive apologies from the maitre, but, understandably this is not the last service exchange you want to have in a restaurant. When something of this nature occurs in places that are operating a tight ship, they would realise this is a grave error that requires more than an apology, it requires service recovery such as taking the digestivi off the bill as a gesture of goodwill. Without this gesture, we couldn't help but think they had made an attempt to grift an extra €10 from us. In the spirit of 'benefit of the doubt' I've excluded this detail from the headline above but either way this was a bitter end...

AGGIORNAMENTO IN RISPOSTA AL RIST. Vi dovreste vergognare per la risposta e soprattutto per aver portato in tavola dei piatti del genere. Ho girato il mondo, sono stato in posti super esclusivi e in posti normalissimi, mi attengo a descrivere la mia esperienza in positivo e in negativo. Il tonno che mi ha portato era imbarazzante, gliel ho fatto presente e mi ha dato contro.

**appena arrivato a Torre San Giovanni, decidiamo, invogliati dalle ottime recensioni di provare questo ristorante. Ci affacciamo alle 12.50 per chiedere se era possibile mangiare....e ci viene risposto..."noo..tra una mezzoretta"...torniamo dopo 30 min. ordiniamo alla signora che era appena arrivata. Tonno grigliato, pasta con gamberi, pesce e pomodorini "il miglior piatto" a detta della proprietaria, alicette marinate, oratina e fritto misto. nell attesa delle prime portate, lunga, veniamo omaggiati da un piatto di patatine al velo fatte da loro, veramente super. Arrivano i piatti....alici marinate, erano una pappetta impresentabile, con questa salsa agliata sopra a coprire ogni sapore. Il mio Tonno era pessimo, 18 euro per forse 110 gr di fettina di tonno, di un colore rosa veramente brutto, tenero più di una scatoletta di tonno di bassa qualità e sapore non pervenuto, avevo fame e l ho finita ma era da rimandarla indietro subito. spaghetti con pesce, gamberi imbarazzanti, sia la presentazione che il sapore, sapeva solo di vino, nn evaporato nella cottura)foto allegata). Frittura niente di che, dubito che fosse pesce fresco. dopo che mi era stato chiesto come fosse andata, ho risposto che il tonno nn era proprio buono e la proprietaria pensavo che stavo scherzando e si è pesantemente risentita. 3 adulti e 1 bambino 127 euro. Vengo da una vita a T.S.G. e purtroppo nel centro è veramente difficile...

Would never go back, NO me gusta

Food quality ok, nothing special. (Took tuna and linguine, grilled veg, white and red wine)

Food quantity: very very tiny, never seen this in Italy or anywhere else. If you want to eat here you'll need to spend 50+ eur per person.

Wine: white was interesting, red was cold.. which is not a gage of quality.

Nice service, though presenting me bread with pavot seeds making it like something special is ridiculous.

Paid 60eur for 2 and.. we went to eat somewhere else. Beware the cockroaches on the terrace. One fell on the table.. but can't blame...