Portobello — Restaurant in Krakow

I came here for dinner with my boyfriend hoping to find some good quality Italian food, as suggested in the reviews. Saying that the experience was terrible is just an euphenism. I'll go into details in chronological order: we had a table booked for 8PM, so we arrived to the resto at the established time. We had to wait at the entrance for quite long before being welcomed by a waitress who, to be honest, was not friendly at all. The resto was half empty, as not many people were sitting inside so we were expecting to be served with more courtesy and pretty quickly. We couldn't be more wrong. We ordered a "Tagliere di salumi e formaggi Italiani" and an Aperol Spritz as starters. Even if the drink was acceptable, I cannot say the same thing about the so called "Italian cheeses and meats". There was nothing fresh, nor Italian on that plate. The after-taste was just terrible and reminded a lot about those plastic-packed products you can find in any discount. Plus, the origin of those meats and cheeses was clearly German, not Italian. We should've understood from the starter that the rest was not going to be better. We decided to continue our dinner with Pizza. What a mistake! I ordered a sorrentina while my bf ordered a portobellicciosa. The pastry tasted like those Guseppe frozen pizzas heated after being two days in the fridge. Pretty awful for a pizza served at the restaurant. If I wanted a Guseppe pizza, I would just go to Biedronka an get one. Then, the dessert happen and consequently the last disappointment. I ordered a pistachio-raspberry small cake and my bf a cannolo siciliano with ricotta. Both of them were tasteless. For the price we payed, we expected much more. So, a piece of advice to this so called Italian resto: stop calling yourself Italian, or just lower the price if you intend to continue cooking in such way!

Last but not least, we were both sick after...

We made a casual visit this afternoon to the local with my SO. Ordered two pizzas from the vegatarian menu, usual classics - marinara and funghi.

When they arrived it looked like there's anchois on the former, but the server wasn't able to confirm and the menus were gone by then. After checking with her manager, they confirmed that the vegetarian pizza has indeed fish in it.

I tried not to be picky but it's 2024 and modern restaurants generally know what 'vegetarian' means when they make a menu. That day's manager didn't even come to resolve, but made the waitress convey to us that 'We've already received it so what they can offer is that we order another pizza'... We didn't want to make a scene, so simply shared the other pizza (pretty good) but generally felt quite ignored by the manager who ruined an otherwise nice mood by not even pretending to care.

In comparison, the pizza place few hundred meters away in a similar situation offered us an apology and another dish which we kindly refused, but at least felt treated with respect.

Two stars only thanks to the waitress who did her best to soothe...

Just had a passable meat lasagne - the portion was small for 30 zloty, but if it had been tasty, no problem.

It was on the dry side and lacked flavour. They need to get the lasagne recipe from Trattoria Venezia! Theirs is fantastic.

My other complaint is the bottle of oil that was put on my table. Not that they give you bread or anything else, they just plunk it down so you can pour it on your food I suppose I unscrewed the top and smelled rancidity - the bottle has either been refilled many times without ever being cleaned or it has been sitting for a very long time.

I'm not convinced that it's even olive oil, couldn't detect any notes of olive, more like the blandness of rapeseed. Perhaps the rancidity overpowered it?

Seems the Polish suburbanites flock here though, the...