Osteria Sala Federico — Restaurant in Rotterdam

In short: Overpriced, poor service, food not worth it.

We were brought here by a friend who liked this place a lot, but it turned out to be a real disappointment. After the starters, we waited for more than an hour for our main dish and some bread that we asked in the meantime,. We ended up getting the food and the bread at the same time. We also received dirty cutlery.

When the pasta finally arrived, they just dropped a bowl on the edge of the table, with a food clamp in it. At first my friends were excited as they were starving, but then they realized this portion was for 3 people, and they had to share it. They served themselves some pasta, but were of course still hungry afterwards as the portion was really small. I had spaghetti allo scoglio, of which most shells were not even opened, and the pasta was drowning in water. The dish was so salty that I was thirsty for the whole evening. As I am a parmesan lover, I kindly asked the waitress for some, but she refused my request as "you are not supposed to eat spaghetti allo scoglio with parmesan". After the main course, we wanted to stay a while to finish our drinks, and when the waitress came and asked if she could clear the table, she proceeded to take our plates first and then came back and took our glasses, which were still full of prosecco. We thought it was obvious that we would finish our drinks before leaving, but apparently not for the waitress, and we had to stop her from taking our drinks away.

Finally, the dishes were way too overpriced for what we got, especially the starters (10€ for a few sardines) and it was not worth the...

We checked their website beforehand but they had very outdated prices that were much lower than reality (27 euro for a 3-course menu vs 47 in the actual restaurant ). We went with a group and made a reservation. When we got there turns out there was a mistake and they didn't have a table for us so they sat us in the hallway of the entrance and a table and folded chairs which were used for delivery crates. Their pizza prices were reasonable (18 euro), but the pizza oven was broken,so we got some pasta carbonara (25 euro). The place was full so they said it will take a while and suggested we get some bruschetta since we were hungry. It was basic tomato filling on bread, but it was also quite cheap. The pasta came after around an hour and the portions were very small we even asked for extra cheese because there wasn't much, and the guanciale was quite pink. They gave 4 portions to us on one big plate and we had to split it amongst us, which was a bit awkward since it wasn't a lot of food. The wine was good, but the pasta was not worth the price. In the end we got some free limoncello to make up for the table incident. The staff overall was very chaotic, the one waiter would sit down at tables and chat with people while other customers were trying to order. It's the vibe of a small Italian restaurant indeed, and they say the food comes straight from Italy, but be prepared to pay a lot to get good portions, and to wait a while for service and for food. We paid over 30 euro for the food and left...

Overpriced menu, especially for vegetarians as they get hardly an option. The only vegetarian alternative available as “main” was a broccoli soup. Even if they get a poor soup instead of pasta and the meat (affettati) in the antipasti is replaced with some vegetables, they still have pay the same price: 50 euro for some veggies with 2 slices of cheese, a soup and one cannolo to share in 2, it makes no sense. Also the oven baked pasta with ragù I got, was overcooked and short of salt. I am italian, living in R’dam since years. Maybe I set the bar a bit too high but it’s definitely easy to find better quality for the same/lower price at other Italian restaurants in R’dam. The atmosphere is supposed to be cozy but 30+ people in that little room is actually just chaos, they try to squeeze in as many people as possible I regret having an instinctive reaction when I saw the bill, it turned out to sound rude to the waitress who didn’t deserve that (in the case You reads this, a renew my apologies). Speaking to the owner was pointless, his main focus seemed to be milking the cash cow. 65+ Euro each for dinner and getting out still...