Osteria Al Duomo — Restaurant in Vieste

it is interesting for me to read some of the reviews on the places we have been to. there seems a pattern that italian visitors prefer this kind of "fusion" place to places that offer simple authentic italian home cooking. so our perspective tend to be the exactly opposite to Italians' ... having come from NYC, the last thing i want after crossing atlantic ocean and half of european continent is to eat "innovative fusion" italian food presented on non-traditional "chic" plates. and THAT is precisely what we got here. it was HIGHLY recommended by our landlord. so for my husband's birthday, we went there. the "creative" italian food just did not do much for us and price was much higher than any other place i have been to in southern italy (and i have been to many over the years) on top of that, service was very mediocre as they kept forgetting about us! (no the place was not busy!) honestly, if i wanted to go for avant garde, i would have stayed in NY! lol overall, we were very underwhelmed and would not go back. but like i said, i guess it all depends on one's experience. in the US, it is not possible to get proper italian food, not even in NYC! but modern spin on food, no place can beat NYC. for italians, it is exactly the opposite! so whether you'll like the place or not all depend on where...

We visited this restaurant on a Sunday evening. When we arrived there at 7 pm the restaurant was empty. The menu in was delivered via a qr code, wifi was provided by the restaurant. We ordered a glass of wine each and two courses. First some pasta and then some pork with smashed potatoes. The food is a little bit difficult to rate for me. The first course, the pasta was very good. Then came the second course. This course was quite cold and the pork meat was quite hard since it was cold. I told this to the waitress, they took the food and heated it up in the microwave. I got the dish back 2 minutes later, this time it was warm. It tasted quite good now, however it was not freshly prepared which I would expect from a nice restaurant. This is why I can't rate the food any higher unfortunately. All in all...

A dining highlight for us as we tried some unique dishes that we had not come across before - in particular we loved the crispy pasta started called 'not quite carbonara' or something similar. It has a taosted flavour and texture of cereal. The stand out dishes were the orecchietti, little money bag shaped pasta filled with cheese and pear in a creamy cheese sauce with basil, as well as the seemingly simple sounding milk and cream gelato with olive oil, rosemary and this crispy and salty biscuits crumble. Amazingly good! Props to the staff who squeezed us in for a quick dinner, with prompt service and then a random take away ice cream for my sister given free of charge. Very generous and memorable in a strip where so many menus...