Osteria Vicini — Restaurant in Rotterdam

The place has an industrial look with beton and metal constructions. It's softened up by the decor and the myriad of candles which gives it a cozy feeling. Modern and trendy. It's suitable.both for groups and for couples.

The food is an "adjusted" Italian food. The octopus was cooked well, not rubbery just a tad over but not overcooked. However, the octopus bruschetta was overcomplicated, with the octopus sitting on a burrata and garnished with pesto sauce.

Same for the caponata: nice cutting of the veggies but over the top with the addition of burrata and arugula.

The gnocchi: I asked if they were made in house and in spite of the positive answer I have my doubt: they were quite tough, I suspect that even if made on site they had been frozen. The taleggio accompanying the sauce was nowhere to be found.

The pizza with radicchio and taleggio would have been fine, had it not been for the mountain of arugula and balsamic vinegar.

All in all, it's an ok experience: I would suggest not overcomplicating things in the attempt to be fancy. Italian cuisine is simple is nature as its strenght lies in the excellency of the ingredients....

Two years ago was my first experience here. Yesterday I decided to give it a second chance...terrible idea. First of all, they should clearly mention that you can only sit inside for max 2 hours only if you arrive at 17:30 or at 19:30. For our bad luck, we made the reservation at 18:30, so we had to rush in ordering and eating because we only had 1 hour before the waiter came to say that we had to leave, even when our deserts were already ordered. Second, the food has not much to do with the Italian idea of keeping it simple, so besides the name, there's not much of italian there. We order several different anti pasti, only the calamari were good, the rest of the plates, including pastas and pizza, were overworked in the presentation but not much in taste. Linguine gamberetti didn't taste at all, like anything, same with the risotto gamberetto, we added salt and pepper so it would taste like something. The pizza dough was alright but they all had a very strong garlic smell and flavor, even when the menu didn't mentioned it had garlic. So overall, not very nice relationship between price...

My experience at Osteria Vicini was bad, mostly because of the incompetence of our waitress. First of all, when I asked if they had a pizza with veggies, she said they had a vegan pizza with tomatoes, rucola, veggies and vegan cheese. I ordered it but when it arrived it was a plain focaccia with some decorative rucola in the middle. Another waitress said there might have been a misunderstanding (!) and didn't offer to replace it. I asked if they could at least add some veggies on the top. They added 7 dried tomatoes and that's it!! The waitress kept being unprofessional/rude/unhelpful the whole night in different occasions, but the worst thing was when at 22.30 (on a friday night) she asked us to leave because they had to close the area of the restaurant where we were sitting. The rest of the restaurant was basically still full!! I found it ridiculous to be asked to leave when so many other people where still there. It's a pity as the restaurant is very nicely decorated inside, food wasn't great but...