Ristorante Al Paradiso — Restaurant in Venice

Absolutely THE worst restaurant I've ever visited.

The head waiter / owner, and all the waiter staff, seem to have a total disregard for their customers and treat them with complete and utter contempt.

I visited here for an evening meal and on approaching the restaurant was barked at by a scowling head waiter 'have you made a reservation?', to which I replied 'no'. We were told that only the inside seats were available so we took a table inside the restaurant.

On the outside of the restaurant there were 3 different menus displayed but we were only handed the a la carte menu which only consisted of meat and fish dishes. As I'm vegetarian I asked about the other menus on display outside and was told quite firmly that they were tourist menus for lunchtime only.

As we had already ordered water I said we'd pay for that and leave, to which another waiter said they could make us lasagne or pasta. I said I was vegetarian and was offered soup a salad or pasta. I asked if they could do penne arrabbiata and was told yes. When the food arrived it was clear it was spaghetti and that there were chunks of ham in it!I called the head waiter over and said again that I was vegetarian, and he said it did contain ham but that it was my fault as that is what i had ordered! I said I had ordered penne arrabbiata, which is vegetarian!

They eventually brought another dish of food to me which was plain spaghetti in a tomato sauce not penne in a tomato, oil and chilli sauce !

The whole meal was bland, boring and tasteless!

A table of 6 Americans entered the restaurant while we were eating our meals, and they were treated equally as badly. One asked for a tomato and lettuce salad and was very firmly told 'no', but she could have 'tomato, lettuce and grated carrot!' Another in their party asked if they could have a side salad of just tomato and cucumber and was promptly told 'no, it's not on the menu!'

I would NEVER recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Venice! The staff are downright rude and show a total dislike of foreign tourists!

How they are still operating after seeing similar reviews is beyond me.

They seem to think thet have a high class establishment but the food tastes like microwaved cheap pasta and the service is worse than you'd get at a fast food...

Firstly there are two menus outside, 1 is a very expensive mainly fish menu, the other is more of a traditional menu offering pasta and pizza. We entered the restaurant in the evening and when presented with the menu it was the expensive mainly fish menu. We asked where the other menu was and we were told, quite rudely, that it was a tourist menu which wasn't used in the evenings.

There wasn't much on the menu that I liked and nothing for my partner who is a vegetarian.

They offered lasagna and pasta with tomato sauce. We should have left straightaway.

When the pasta with tomato sauce arrived it had ham in it! Even though we told the waiter several times that my partner is a vegetarian.

It was replaced but only after a disagreement and the blame put on us for offering the wrong thing.

A group of 6 Americans came in shortly afterwards and they were treated to even worse attitude from the waiter. They asked for a salad with tomatoes but were told no, only lettuce tomato and carrot! Why?

The meal was bland and my lasagna was basically sloppy tomato hardly any beef at all.

A would recommend everyone avoid this place. Horrible food and even...

The pizza I received was store-bought, pre-made. Nothing like you would expect in the heart of Venice, where people come to have a great experience of Italy with some traditional Italian food. They won't receive that here. It made me quite sad, if I'm honest.

We had some problems with the service as well, I dined here with two colleagues and they would not split the bill when asked, saying "It's impossible to calculate service price when splitting the bill", which was just hilarious...

The place has only three good perspectives: Firstly, it's located at a more peacefull, less noisy, less crowded part of Venice and the outdoor heating makes it pleasurable to dine outside even in cold weather, so I did not have too much problem with the atmosphere itself (which is by the way comes down more to the atmosphere of Venice itself, rather then the restaurant). Secondly, it's cheap (which is mostly why we decided to order food here), but considering the pre-made food we received it was still too expensive. Thirdly, the Aperol spritz was good... But that just isn't enough to make up for the bad experience I had here.

Overall I wouldn't...