Osteria del Lovo — Restaurant in Venice

It has been a long time since I have come away from a restaurant extolling the virtues of nothing but the wine.

I have eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world, countless Michelin starred establishments, and have even owned an award-winning restaurant, thus my knowledge of great food, global cuisine, and wine is nuanced. So, let me start on the positive. The wine was a Sicilian rosé, unctuous in its pinkness and roiling with a salinity only proximity to the sea can afford. The winery responsible for the only joy extracted from this meal was Donnafugata. My hats off to them, the artfully-designed label read Lumera 2021. That’s where my mirth commenced and ceased to exist.

Thank goodness for that wine!

Two starters that sounded promising when I read the menu led me down the road to despondency. A local baby octopus served in a tuna sauce spewed water onto my plate when I cut into it, the meat somehow magically vacillating between chewy and mushy. How they managed to achieve this, I have not a clue. The sauce was like the chef had put a can of tuna into the blender and pressed go. The only tasty element on the plate, the caperberries, provided one bright ping of flavour amidst a dish that was unbalanced on so many levels and 100% devoid of appeal. The other starter, a baked scallop, came sitting in a pale sauce akin to babyfood but with zero taste. Celeriac was what the menu had stated. Has this chef never heard of salt, fat, acid, or heat? Might I direct them post haste to the Netflix series on the subject. The plate was lacking in all of the above. I tried it with the tuna sauce from the octopus and added a slice of the caperberry to give it a grasping chance at some flavour. The scallops were bland, the sauce was bland, the colours on the plate, bland again. We left most of it on the dish and asked to move on. The waiter did not bother to enquire if we had enjoyed it. I suppose in a tourist town they really don’t care. They don’t expect to ever see you or serve you again. Mentally, my mind moved to the next course, and I figured we would be safe with pasta. This is Italy, and I had not been disappointed beneath that menu heading in almost a year, but, here too, this establishment was going to prove me wrong. A local shape I did not know called bigoli promised pecorino and truffle—what could possibly go averse there? Somehow, they managed.

Not a shred of piquant, salty pecorino could I glean, and not a hint of truffle. Instead, I pulled a random, crunchy, inedible bay leaf from the noodles like an unwelcome surprise. There was zero joy in this dish. Zero! The texture of the pasty was chewy, but not in a pleasant way, leaving remnants of the taste of raw flour in my mouth.

The next plate I attempted to get down was the braised lamb shank and potatoes. The lamb a specialty as Easter approached, whispered promisingly at a long, slow cook and was almost tender. Too bad it was cold and sitting in a sauce that felt congealed to the plate. Smashing into me, the intense waves of old fry oil from the sad cubes of potatoes surrounding it made me want to cry. Roasting a potato is so easy...why? why? why? And if you have to lower yourself to a quick fry, at least keep your oil clean and give them a crunch. They were barely shaded brown and soggy. I added a pinch of the Maldon salt I carry in my purse to season the lamb and tried to get some supper in amidst this dining fiasco, then washed it down with several long sips of the lovely wine, finishing the glass with a sense of impending doom.

Gluttons for punishment, we ordered dessert, a tiramisu, which, to be generous, was not that bad. It definitely would have been grateful for more coffee, less mascarpone, and better layering, but at least I could eat it without grimacing.

Do your wallet and stomach a favour and...

Don’t do it. It looks pretty online with the photos and in person, but that’s all this place is- aesthetically pleasing. Our sever (if you want to call him that) Ansel or Angel, hardly checked in on us. He laughed in my face when I told him a shot of reposado back home in USA was between $4-$10 depending on where you went and they listed their reposado shots for $58. Yes, you read that right. He brought us dry bread, didn’t offer us olive oil or balsamic vinegar to go along with it. He was so robotic. When he asked how the food was - I was honest - I said it was ok. Normally that would prompt a server to to say “oh no what could made it great? We are sorry to hear that!” But all he said was “good”. I think even if we said it was awful he would have the same response. Again robotic, doesn’t connect with the customer, doesn’t have any hospitality customer service tone or approach. He should not be a server honestly. So the food let’s talk about it. We ordered steak, carbonara, duck and fish. He didn’t ask how we wanted the duck and when it arrived, it was dry and overcooked. Next to the served duck on th At first glance, Osteria del Lovo feels like it might just be a hidden gem. Tucked into a charming space with split-level seating and warm lighting, it draws you in with a blend of modern flair and local energy. But step past the ambiance and onto the plate, and the illusion quickly crumbles.

Let’s begin with the duck—a tragic, overcooked slab of meat made somehow worse by its baffling accompaniments: BBQ sauce and strawberries. Yes, that’s a real pairing they chose. It was so off-putting that I had to use bites of dry, stuck-together carbonara to wash it down. That pasta, by the way, had decent flavor but arrived as a clumpy mess, clearly cooked in advance and plated without care.

Then came the steak, and with it, déjà vu: the same errant smear of BBQ sauce. When we asked our server—whose name was either Ansel or Angel, depending on how his accent hit the air—why the sauce appeared on both meat dishes, he casually said, “It’s for decoration.” A response so hollow, it might as well have been scribbled on a Post-it and stuck to the plate.

But the confusion didn’t stop there. One of us ordered the “white fish”—a dish so vague, even Ansel/Angel couldn’t tell us what it was. It took another waiter to identify it as sea bass. And of course, it was served with its own inexplicable “decoration”: a drizzle of teriyaki sauce. Nothing about it complemented the fish—it was just there, like everything else on the menu, seemingly placed without intention or cohesion.

Service throughout was inattentive at best. Ansel/Angel came to the table multiple times without noticing a visibly empty, tilted water glass. The table next to us received oil and vinegar with their bread—common courtesy, one would think—but we were passed over entirely. When we told him the food was “okay,” he didn’t ask for feedback, didn’t smile, didn’t even acknowledge the remark. He simply stood there in silence. It was awkward, but sadly, not the most uncomfortable moment of the evening.

Wine? We tried red, white, and prosecco. All perfectly forgettable, much like the rest of the experience. The only upside? The prices were reasonable—though that’s hardly a victory when the food evokes memories of wedding banquet leftovers or reheated cafeteria trays.

We found Osteria del Lovo on The Fork. Let this be your reminder: not all reviews are written by people who know the difference between “cute” and “culinary.” This place is a trap wrapped in charm, with dishes that feel thrown together, sauces that serve no purpose, and service that borders on indifferent.

Final verdict: Skip it. Venice is full of life-changing food....

This is a SCAM! RUN!!!

My mother and I visited a restaurant on March 21st and were led to a corner table on the second floor. After we were seated, the server asked where we were from. I said China, thinking it was just small talk. Later, he recommended the seafood pasta as the "today's special," which included scallops and oysters. I agreed, but when the dish arrived, I was shocked to find it came with a whole lobster. I felt uncomfortable because he hadn't mentioned the lobster when recommending it.

When I asked why the portion was so large since we intended to share, he explained that they added extra pasta and the whole lobster because we were sharing. I then inquired about the price, which wasn't listed anywhere, including the menu. He told me it should normally be 60 euros for half a lobster but would be 80 euros for the whole lobster.

I was frustrated. He had called it seafood pasta, not lobster pasta, and I specifically requested a dish meant for two. After he checked with the chef, he said there had been a misunderstanding, and they offered to reduce the price to 65 euros.

When we asked for the bill, another server brought it over, and it still showed pasta for 80 euros and he brought the pos So quick (thinking I won't check??) I had to ask again what was going on. I finally paid but expressed my disappointment that we hadn’t been informed this was lobster pasta instead of just seafood pasta. With regular pasta listed at around 20 euros on the menu, if the "today's special" was so expensive, they should have communicated that clearly.

The server told me they weren’t allowed to disclose prices proactively, claiming that if customers knew the price, they wouldn’t consider it special anymore. He also said, "We are all Chinese; I'm trying to help you," which felt offensive. I mean… excuse me?? Did you hear yourself?? —my ethnicity had nothing to do with the situation and people don't want to be ‘surprised’ by the extremely high price! I also noticed another Asian group seated next to us, and the waiter also asked them where they were from, which seemed odd.

As for the food, I don’t think the small oysters from Sicily were worth 6 euros each, and the lobster meat was difficult to extract from the shell, you know what I mean. This was the first time I felt misled by a Google Maps review, and it left me questioning the quality of Venice cuisine after traveling through half of Italy.

And hey just checked the reviews seems like I’m not the only one got scammed 😅what's wrong with you? I hope no one suffered the same situation because I hesitate to write a...