Osteria Monelli — Restaurant in Vicenza

UPDATE: Moved to solid 4 stars. Good food wine and friendly service.

It was my first visit so I rounded up from 3.5 stars. It will be more definite after second visit. FOOD: Ordered 1/2 liter of house wine, rabbit appetizer, bigoli duck, and eel pasta. Rabbit appetizer was cold meat with dressing and I'm not a fan of cold meat so this appetizer was nothing spectacular for me. However, bigoli duck pasta was excellent. Well cooked noodles and flavorful sauce. I see why people recommended this pasta. Eel pasta was not what I expected. Once again, noodles and eel were awesome, but the sauce was a little too fishy for me. Glad I ordered the wine to balance to taste. One caveat: when I was almost finished with the pasta, the waiter offered grated parmesan. That made it 10 times better. Wish I had the cheese from the beginning. SERVICE: Great service with smile. I just wished they would have offered the cheese sooner. LOCATION: 5 star location. Close to The town square and across from a beautiful bridge. And one of the best coffee shop in Vicenza is on the other side of the bridge. COST: I'd say a little above average. What I ordered cost a little less than 50 euro. Above average, because the wine was relatively cheap and I did not order any dessert. MISC: Good food and excellent location. I recommend this restaurant, but if you are ordering eel, then I suggest asking for grated...

Yes, the food and service were great, and the atmosphere could be great - but wow it felt like they didn’t want us to be here. The review of 3 stars is only because the food was good. Everything else kinda sucked.

Here’s what it comes down to - we eat out a lot and so have experienced many levels of service, but to come in w no reservation when all tables are empty, to say we only want drinks and appetizers so we’re shunted into a small area, and then others who also had no reservation came in after us and had their choice of place, and now we’re about to leave and almost all tables are still empty… wow can you say super frustrating? We came because a local guy that we met when we first arrived had suggested this place to us, so we gave it a go - but such a bad referral and experience. I would say, stay away. The rest of our experiences in Vicenza were SO...

Never ever again! Do not go there!

The worst food I ever ate in Italy, while it is hard to find bad food there. We were for lunch there, the appetiser was tasty, but this is not the merit of the kitchen because it was salami and cheese...and veal heart (pic1), that was ok, but nothing extra.

But the main dish OMG we ordered more kind of pastas and all of them was a tragedy, the duck meat was cold and the pasta was not ready to eat, the other pasta with cheese sauce (pic2) was not not "aldente" just dry as sawdust, all of two of the same kind and the cheese sauce was like a cheap cream cheese from the supermarket. The 3th kind of pasta was also terrible. The staff is kind but that is all.

Bad experience and...