Antico Gatoleto Ristorante Pizzeria — Restaurant in Venice

I have been to many restaurants, and honestly, this is the first bad experience that was at such a level that i thought this should not go ignored. Food was very average, but to be honest, it could have been amazing and still have been spoilt by the extremely poor customer service. It wasn't just one staff member, but all of the staff members we engaged with throughout our visit treated us very poorly. The first staff member was the one who showed us to our seats, he was unpleasant in his manners. Next was the young man who took our order, and he was even ruder, seemed angry for some reason, and proceeded to almost throw stuff at our table. He did not like us asking what was in a particular dish. He kept interrupting, and you could see his irritation rising. We felt we were friendly and soft in our approach. We put it to the side, thinking maybe he is just very busy, and it was just a once off, but it continued throughout, and we noticed they were not particularly busy. Later, we noticed him dropping something elsewhere, making a poor effort to clean it up, and laughing it off with other staff. My meal landed, and my partners landed 10 mins later. We put it down to the fact that it's the last orders, sure its not great, but it was fine. Atmosphere continued to be poor, and from there on, we just couldn't shake the feeling that this restaurant was unhappy with us for some reason. We spent our time trying to figure out if it was something we did. When we first entered the restaurant, we asked if they were still serving. They said yes, but we need to leave our seats in 40 mins. We agreed it was fine, and they showed us to our seat. It's the only thing we can think of for them to be unhappy with us. We made sure we ordered quickly and ate quickly. We finished before the time they asked. In fact, we finished well before other customers who were there before we arrived. If this was the reason why they treated us poorly, they could have saved us the bother by saying sorry we have stopped serving and we would have gone on our merry way. When I went up to pay for our meal, I just couldn't believe how unprofessional and unfriendly the lady was. There was zero acknowledgement, zero eye contact, and practically threw the bill on the counter. I duly paid, and needless to say, I did not leave a tip, which is very rare for me. Such was my level of frustration at this point, I actually left without even saying goodbye, which was even difficult as it's practically an automatic reflex for me. If they were in any way annoyed with us for some reason, there is no excuse for the poor level of customer service. Thankfully, we had many good experiences in Venice. This was the only down point, and in conclusion, we would not...

Strange experience. I’ll start by saying the pizza was amazing. That and the location are the reason for 3 stars. My wife and I are from the USA but try our best to be respectful and quietly polite. We get embarrassed when we see some of our fellow Americans behaving obnoxiously. The service started out fine but when they heard us speak it was like a switch flipped. The only place I’ve noticed anything similar was in France (we travel a lot). The waiters almost disdainfully gave us our food and we had to pretty much hunt a server down to get more water and wine. There were some obnoxiously rude patrons that must be local regulars doing a childish thing clearly talking about us. When it was apparent that we noticed they started passing their phones back and forth giggling and looking over at us. We had come from a wonderful concerto and were well dressed and for the life of me I cant figure out what the deal was. Sadly it seems they were friends with the staff as well because it was made clear nothing would be done about the situation and laughter and hugs were exchanged between them and the restaurant staff when they left. Some of the younger locals in the restaurant appeared concerned but we shrugged it off ultimately. Again, great pizza but if you are from the USA you may want to look elsewhere.

P.S. Very few of my reviews are negative and I tried to make this as positive as possible but if I were less mature I’d have some choice words for the people working and some of their obviously preferred customers. This is the only place we didn’t tip and we’ve been in Italy for a week now having 2-3 meals a day. I understand tipping isn’t standard here but we like to show appreciation and this place did...

Moderate food and service, not bad, but also not a highlight. Food & Drinks: Moderate. We had side salads which were fresh and delicious and four different kinds of pizza which tasted nice, but were too oily. Of course, Pizza is not a low-fat/oil kind of food but the oil was dripping down, that is not what we've wanted. With less oil, the Pizza would've been really delicious. Appropriate amount of seafood on the Frutti da Mare one, though. And the Pesto on the other Pizza was very rich in flavour. Not the best Pizza, definitely, but moderate. The red house-wine though was kind of flat in its flavour. Limoncello was awesome. Ambience: Very pretty and elegant. Looks better than it tastes, that is to say. Toilets were clean, table setting was nice. Service: friendly, but slow. At least, to us. We ordered the side salads as starters and they were served very quick with the pizza for my brother (who was the only one not ordering a salad) - but as we finished with the salads it took about 30 Minutes for our Pizzas to be served. My Brother finished his one and had to wait without food as we got to eat ours. Not well organised. And no apology - I don't expect anything but just a short polite "we're sorry" that would have made it a little bit less bad. But as I said in the beginning, very friendly. Value for Money: for Venice, its definitely okay. Can't complain. Just the 5€ for one Limoncello is slightly expensive... :/ Conclusion: If you want a cheap (well, cheap for Venice) dinner in a nice and beautiful restaurant, go here. Just don't expect any "wows"...