Boccanera | Ristorante Pizzeria — Restaurant in Krakow

We were excited to try this restaurant since it had such good reviews. However, we had a bit of a mixed experience.

People who say that this is “the best Italian restaurant they’ve ever been to” are probably not that familiar with Italian food. The food is okay, but it’s nothing special that you can’t find in an Italian themed restaurant anywhere else in the world. We ordered two pizzas and two pasta dishes. Pasta and one of pizzas were good, while the other pizza (vegetarian) was quite bland. The pizzas also needed longer in the oven, which is important for Neapolitan pizza that has a lot of dough as it is. Also think it’s a bit of a warning sign with an Italian restaurant that serves hamburgers...

Our waiter was very nice but seemed a bit stressed, maybe he had too many tables to serve. We were quite shocked by the small amount of wine that was served in big glasses (see picture below). The wine was also not super cheap, 42 zlotys per glass. Beer and food were reasonably priced. As a non-Polish person, I find the system where the waiter gives you the bill, says “this is excluding service” and expects you to add on 12,5% is strange. Just add it to the prices of the food instead, so customers don’t have to end up in an uncomfortable situation. However, I understand that this is the Polish system and not something specific for this restaurant.

Nice atmosphere, shame we were not able to book a table outside as it was a beautiful...

I came here at 5:30 pm on Saturday evening. Even though the restaurant was almost empty (only 3 tables occupied), they placed me at a high table. Well, that ruined the whole experience. The bar tables are old and not stable, no way to fix your legs. So I spent the whole dinner balancing on that chair. As a result I decided to skip the dessert and leave before my body was in pain. I went with the Ceasar salad. It was served pretty fast and had good and interesting presentation. The sauce was good. But the chicken didn't have that crispy skin as I expected. Overall the dish was decent, but nothing to remember about. The music in the restaurant was nice and easy going - hits from 70-80s musicals. If you're there solo, it creates a nice atmosphere and I even was singing in my head along :) At the same time it's not loud so you can have a conversation with your friends without a need to raise your voice. Overall I would put 4*, but as they are much more expansive than average restaurants in Krakow (I paid 50 pln for a salad and soda), I would expect higher standards. So not quite...

The head girl/manager whoever she is, was very rude. We came at dinner time and asked to be seated, she said they will have tables available in 15 mins so we waited. Many more people came after us also wanting tables. In the end we found a free table outside after some people left and sat down only to be told that this isn’t our table and to move inside (which was about 100 degrees inside next to the pizza oven). Don’t understand why it would matter considering that we came first before the line of people. Ordered pizza and pasta, both average at best. The Food took a long time. It Took even longer to get the bill. Probably because we refused to stay for coffee after or dessert, who knows. We needed to ask for the bill at least 3 times. The head girl needed to control every receipt. The whole sitting experience left a bad taste in our mouth to be honest. I think customers have a right to choose which tables to sit at and if they want to be outside , especially in the middle of summer....