Alle Corone — Restaurant in Venice

My companion and I both took the 8 course tasting menu. Before we had a start at that, the chef sent us a little “surprise” to the table, a selection of little nibbles, which is quite common in the Michelin world. The pre-menu nibbles are usually the lowest point of the meal, not this time. The nibbles were carefully selected, tasty and for a change quite interesting. We started the menu off with the raw snapper, which was delicate, light, fresh and beautifully seasoned. Such beautiful dish to start the menu off with. The freshness and the amazing quality of the produce ran throughout the entire meal, as well as beautiful plating. The menu continued with octopus, one of my big favourites. I am not exaggerating when I say that I could’ve had an entire octopus of theirs if they would’ve presented me with one - it was just so delicious. Beautifully cooked, well seasoned and so fresh. Followed by spaghetti with lobster. The dish contains pea sauce and peas, that are not my favourite, however, I loved it, which to me shows what a great chef Mauro Cautiello is, big compliments to him. The lobster was very fresh and had an incredible lemony taste. The only criticism I would give is that I wished there was a little more of it on the plate. The menu continued with burrata ravioli with anchovies on top, yet another dish I would’ve not normally gone for, as I am not a great fan of anchovies. However, they made sense in this dish, and I loved it. The anchovies added a nice little saltiness and taste of fish to a dish which otherwise would’ve been rather plain. Amberjack was another huge favourite of mine, it just melted on the tongue. It was followed by quail, which was well cooked and nicely seasoned. The beef fillet that followed was amazing, beautifully cooked, melted on the tongue, great sauce and such lovely carrot purée. For pre-dessert they had chosen white chocolate sauce with passion fruit jelly, topped with sparkling sugar - fun little treat. For dessert we had lemon curd with mousse and sponge - such strong flavour on the lemon curd, I loved it! The sponge didn’t really make sense for me, but I can see what they were going for. Service was great, our server was very friendly friendly, and very knowledgeable about the wines, which my companion appreciated. I myself sticked to soft drinks, however, my companion had lovely wines. The whole meal was in total of 386€, which we thought at first was a mistake, but no, all was correct. To us it was cheap, because in London the meal could’ve been well around £800, and the portion sizes were generous, but not too big. I would certainly go back there, and I am pleased to say that it was one of the best meals I have had in quite some time. Thank you, Alle Corone, for having us.(I wish I had taken more photos, but I don’t normally take pictures of my food, so I only have a photo of the beef fillet, which will be included in...

The meal started very well, but both the service and the food declined throughout the meal. The service were really good to start with and the first courses were amazing, but as the meal progressed the food got less inspired and the service almost stopped. Note that the restaurant tries hard to be at somewhat of a Michelin level, but they have quite a way to go to reach that. This means that the food and service wasn't horrible, just not good enough for the price level or our expectations.

The biggest issue was that the wines from the tasting menu with wine pairing. While not too expensive, the wines were not particularly good either and they were also consistently served after the food was already on the table, meaning the food got cold while we were waiting for the wine to be able to taste it by itself before contrasting it with the food. Furthermore the wine pairings were uninspired and didn't do anything for either the wine or the food, they were just varying types of wine to go with the food, with no apparent thought behind the matching of the flavours.

Regarding the service we weren't asked what we thought of the food even once throughout the meal. This got noticeable as each course was progressively less good than the previous, even including the dessert. The only highlight was the first starter and then the pre-dessert which took it up a notch, but still was below expectations. The lack of questions about the food and other needs were a general indication that the staff appeared stressed and there wasn't much possibility to ask questions at all. An example is that we had finished our water around course 4, and henceforth I sat with an empty water glass and an empty water bottle at the table without anyone asking if we wanted a refill for the rest of the meal, despite getting 4 more courses and wines served. This should have been caught by an attentive waiter!

At the end of the meal we mentioned our displeasure to the head waiter, to be met with a response about how they had never gotten any such feedbacks about the food ever before and being unable to understand that we were unhappy with the wine pairings since the wines were very good, something I as a certified wine taster disagree with. The concept of a pairing appeared to have been fully lost on him, or perhaps lost in translation. He did not either appear to be accepting of critical feedback to improve such details, which might explain their lack of Michelin recommendations despite their obvious desire to be...

After reading very good things and reviews about this restaurant we decided to have dinner there. Luckily we weren't very hungry so we both started with just one dish instead of the menu which I originally planned on doing. I had the octopus - presentation was nice, everything else wasn't. It was very hard and while I love minimal invasive kitchen, this was simply tasteless. The celery root purée consisted of probably just one ingredient (very sweet and strong taste) and therefore made whatever taste you had from the octopus hardly noticeable. At least with all the cutting im confident to say, that I burned off all the calories I consumed while doing so. My friend had the ravioli - again presentation was nice but she also didn't finish her plate. The dish wasn't well balanced in our opinion. It was too sweet and with the duck which came as duck pâté this was just not enjoyable. This was probably only the second time in my life, when I told them directly, that I didn't like the food when the waiter came to ask, if we wanted to have dessert. He didn't really react in any way to us telling him, that we both were disappointed and carried away our leftovers. Just once again he came to ask "so we skip dessert" and then brought some little sweets which unfortunately also were a huge disappointment after having a similar setup in a different (somewhat cheaper) restaurant that was very high quality and absolutely delicious. Besides that the service was good and the restaurant has a nice atmosphere. For 2 glasses of wine, a bottle of water and two dishes we...