Trattoria Santo Stefano — Restaurant in Venice

So many plaza cafes to choose from in Venice, we greatly regret choosing Stefano's on 14 June 2023. No one was eating inside, about 20 tables had 2 or 3 guests, one had 8, another had 15. There were around a dozen empty tables. We were provided table 32 at 19:40, wife went to use the toilet (which was inside, upstairs adjacent to the kitchen ... ok?) Wife ordered lemon chicken (takes 5-6 minutes to saute), I asked for spaghetti Bolognese (9 minutes to cook pasta, sauce is prepped ahead of time), and an appetizer of Bruschetta. Our waiter bought my wife's glass of wine. 20 minutes later the table next to us (seated 10 minutes after us) was offered our bruschetta; fortunately they refused it so after 2 minutes of confusion we got our plain looking bruschetta. At this point 4 or 6 more tables had been seated, and the table of 15 was absorbing attention from 3 or 4 of the 5 waiters plus the busboy. We watched as 6 or 8 tables, nearly all seated after us, received their entrèes. At 20:40 we asked a different waiter where our entrees were, and after 5 more minutes we got our entrees. Wife's chicken was very tough and barely warm; my Bolognese was quite ordinary. It was obvious our food sat under a heat lamp for over 30 minutes. Our waiter didn't bother to ask how the food was, he probably knew what I would say. Another 30 minutes go by, empty plates in front of us for about 10 minutes, and I asked for the check, another waiter ran my credit card. As I was signing the receipt he apologized to us and said "your service was terrible". Uh yeah, thanks, I noticed too. If your looking for barely average food and terrible service,...

Ate here in late September 2024.

The venue was nice as were the staff, but I can’t lie one scenario really overshadowed the whole thing.

As a coeliac I need to be careful about what I eat, I don’t think the first waiter could take this on board and was far too busy just getting us to eat there.

After picking the safest option our food came quickly which was tasty.

While I appreciate you cannot help the weather or the nasty beasties that come with it, the area was inundated with mosquitos and when we left between us we had about 80 bites.

The issue that overshadowed everything however was the complimentary Limoncello or rather in our case. We made no fuss about anything, were polite and ordered more than one course, but literally everyone else was given limoncello with the bill, with the exception of us, it was like a expectation by the end. And while you understand these things are discretionary, we saw limoncello delivered to every time around us, multiple seatings, but us nothing.

Here’s the kicker, the waiter came to our table with the bill and Limoncello, but dropped the bill on our table and waked off with the drinks, then had the audacity to return shortly after asking for a tip.

You could say, spoiled little English people wanting something for nothing, but when everyone else gets it and your pestered for a tip, which nobody else was, it feels like so,e sort of weird exclusion. The key to hospitality is consistency, despite doing nothing negative, we were excluded from something everyone else got, so on that basis silly as it sounds, I’d...

A lovely location for dining outside. Very slow service between courses, however. Food was disappointing. Really dull salad caprese. One small leaf of basil, barely ripe tasteless tomatoes on a sparse bed of rocket which had no peppery taste. Wines by the bottle are about 20% higher than they should be so we only had one glass each. Second course was pizza, delivered 30 minutes after first course. Only a hint of herbs, boring tomato sauce and overly salted anchovies. Yes, anchovies and capers are salty but rinsing anchovies before cooking helps to reduce the saltiness and enhance their flavour. And finally, a piece of plastic emerged from one of the pizzas. Avoid this place. There are so many excellent...