Il Rifugio — Restaurant in Volterra

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME, MONEY, OR HEALTH ON THIS PLACE

What looked from the outside like one of the most beautiful places to eat on our trip turned out to be the biggest disappointment of our entire holiday, by far. In a few years, we’ll probably laugh at how foolish we were to waste our money there. The only reason we ate here was that it wasn’t crowded and seemed to offer some seafood for my mother, but we definitely regret that decision now.

Every single meal we ordered lacked flavor and arrived mostly cold. My pasta with wild boar ragu (which I had discovered at a different place the day before and loved) was just overcooked pasta, with some salty pasta water, parsley, and a few dry, overcooked pieces of meat that tasted and looked more like beef than wild boar. I’ve seen kids make tastier pasta dishes, and I should have drowned that plate in parmesan. The “Toscana Ragu” looked and tasted like some jarred Barilla Bolognese or something you’d see at a children’s birthday party. He felt sick and was ready to throw up for the rest of the evening. The grilled seafood platter was undercooked and had a faint gas taste. The pasta with mussels had maybe 5 or 6 small mussels; the rest was just overcooked, cold spaghetti with tomato sauce, all for 22€. One glass of wine would have cost us 9€, so we opted for water and Coke, which still cost 4€ for a small 0.33L can.

I suspect there was only one cook for the entire restaurant, who became completely overwhelmed once a family order came in, because no chef on this planet would want to serve such terrible food intentionally.

The bread arrived in a paper bag, which was suspicious. Why couldn’t we see how the bread looked? Probably because the dough was still raw inside, and the waitress knew that, so she hid it in the bag for as long as possible.

The prices would have been fair if the food had been good, but given the poor quality, lack of flavor, and the obviously rushed preparation of every dish, the food wasn’t worth even a third of what we paid. The waitstaff weren’t as bad as some reviews here suggest, but two of them stood right next to our table the entire time, waiting for new guests. We felt awkward, with no privacy, and the whole outdoor area was otherwise completely empty, except for one other family who made the same mistake we did.

When we tasted our meals, all of our faces froze as we realized, at the same time, how bad the food was. We pulled out our phones and realized what kind of restaurant we had stumbled into and how terrible the reviews were.

I don’t want to criticize the waiters too much, and I don’t know why the chef is so bad, not just for us but for many other people as well. We’re just glad we didn’t order the expensive steaks, because I’m sure we would have suffered for it.

This place seems severely mismanaged and desperately needs to hire more or better chefs. I don’t understand how a restaurant can be this bad in such a beautiful town with so many amazing dining options, but in the end, that’s not our problem as customers. This restaurant is terrible and will be a shitstain on my memories of this...

Short story: a trap. Long story: our intention was to go to the restaurant on the opposite, which had been recommended in the Lonely Planet. However, as it was closed we decided to try Il Rifugio. As starters we had the crostinis with truffle creme and as a main course pasta in truffle sauce. The crostinis turned out to be 5 tiny slices of bread topped with bland truffle creme (probably cheap supermarket quality) and some sad rocket salad - all together for 5 euros, absolutely overpriced. With our main course I still regret to have given in to the recommendation of taking some fresh truffles with my pasta. For that reason, the restaurant brought us their most jumping jack like waiter - he explained only in Italian (although he was capable of English, as we learnt later) that 1 g of truffle costs 2 euro. I vehemently asked him to use only 1 g, but of course he just went ahead very quickly until I asked him to stop. He now told me that it's 2g, so 4 Euro. I acknowledged it and so we ate our bland pasta. However, the climax was the bill. We received a bill, where the dishes were not named (that's okay), but this was used to charge way more for the two main courses than should have been the case. As we were confused by this, we asked for the menu, went through the bill with the waiter and another waiter and, of course, an "excuse" for the incovenience was found as the waiter just pointed on some dish which cost the named price. All in all, this was our most disappointing dinner in all of Italy (luckily, our first one). Please avoid...

C’est simple : FUYEZ !!

De passage à Volterra lors d’un lundi de Pâques avec une forte affluence touristique, nous avons commis l’erreur de choisir le premier restaurant où il nous semblait apercevoir des places disponibles, sans prendre le temps de lire les avis auparavant.

Rapidement un premier doute : le serveur a tendance à nous proposer une table à l’extérieur alors qu’on lui a demandé de s’asseoir à l’intérieur. « Pas d’inquiétude, on vous prête des couvertures pour ne pas avoir froid ». On insiste pour déjeuner à l’intérieur, il a l’air déçu. On comprendra plus tard pourquoi en lisant les avis des internautes : le prêt de couvertures est apparemment payant.

Ensuite : nous avions sélectionné ce lieu car il s’annonce comme une pizzeria. Dans la rue, une affiche détaille d’ailleurs les pizzas avec photos à l’appui. Mais une fois assis à table, on nous présente des menus uniquement avec des plats plutôt onéreux. En réalité, le restaurant ne propose pas de pizzas à chaque service, mais ça ils évitent naturellement de le préciser. Certains clients déjà assis à la table d’à côté ont eu le courage de repartir une fois compris le subterfuge (un nom sans doute plus approprié que « refuge » pour ce lieu). On aurait dû faire pareil.

Nous voilà donc avec un menu peu inspirant et mal traduit en anglais (« stek », « mashrooms », etc.). On finit par commander par défaut des lasagnes. En attendant, on nous apporte du pain. Ou ce qui est censé être du pain. En tout cas pas du jour, et probablement même pas de la veille, tellement il est dur !

Puis beaucoup beaucoup d’attente, mais ça j’aurais pu m’en douter : de ma place, j’avais une vue sur la cuisine où j’ai pu observer un employé mettre pratiquement 20 minutes pour préparer une simple planche charcuterie/fromage. On a quand même fini par nous servir 4 plats de lasagnes, copieusement arrosées d’huile d’olive (pour ramollir la pâte qui ne daterait pas non plus du jour ? peut-être…).

Inutile de préciser qu’on n’a pas eu l’idée de commander des desserts. Mais même payer l’addition nécessite de la patience. Réussir à intercepter un serveur qui daigne s’occuper de vous relève de l’exploit. Je finis par en attraper un du regard, qui n’a plus trop d’autre choix que de venir éditer la facture… avant de se faire engueuler sans retenue par un serveur plus âgé. Pas besoin d’être bilingue italien pour comprendre qu’il lui reproche d’avoir pris l’initiative de s’occuper d’un client (!!) alors que son rôle est simplement de préparer les boissons. La tête basse, il retourne à ses affaires… mais le serveur plus âgé aussi, qui me laisse donc en plan, en attendant que notre serveur « attitré »finisse par revenir de je ne sais où pour s’occuper du paiement.

L’expérience est tellement désagréable du début à la fin que, lorsqu’on sort enfin du restaurant, on éprouve un sentiment étrange de retrouver sa liberté. Quel dommage quand on sait qu’il y a plein d’autres bon restaurants à proximité pour déguster de la bonne cuisine italienne. Donc, ne perdez surtout pas votre temps ici ! Quant à nous, on s’est juré de lire dorénavant systématiquement les avis des internautes avant de...