Ristorante del Ghetto da Ottavio — Restaurant in City of San Marino

dearest, dearest, restaurant. what a gem. what an unbelievable place. i am amazed at everything here— the lovely staff, the flavours, the cute interior. there’s also so much mystery, and what a random location! San Marino is just befuddling to me. but if you do come here, this is the only right place to eat. we came for both lunch and dinner, both were fantastic. especially lunch, as it was raining and we had the pleasure to be served by a lovely girl who spoke excellent English and helped us navigate the menu, even treating us to some delightful Dracolino as a digestif. i will never forget this kindness!locals come here and we even learned that you can get some stuff off the menu if you ask!

for lunch i had the tagliatelle with calamari which was great, the homemade pasta had a fresh texture and the portion was huge! i also tried some of my mom’s tortelloni, and the broth was especially delectable. the lasagne was also pretty flawless.

for dinner, they were a bit busier than usual so it took a long time for us to get the food. maybe we were a bit neglected since we are tourists. but whatever, still enjoyed it. the napoli pizza i recommend, it has a good amount of anchovies with the ideal salty touch. the rabbit and lamb were off-menu easter specials, and i was happy we got them. the rabbit dish is thick and tender, packed with meaty flavour, dill, and other wild herbs. the lamb was good but i’m not the biggest lamb fan so i passed it onto the rest of my family. the vegetables were nice albeit bitter, but that’s expected in early spring.

for dessert i implore you to get the cheesecake, i believe it is mascarpone-based? it’s like a thick not-too-sweet cheesy cream on a bed of digestive biscuits, and you can choose your own topping sauce. the creme caramel and crema catalana were totally solid too!

i’m so happy we chose to eat here and i hope you guys...

The restaurant has a very good vibe - cozy, authentic, good interior and a kind attentive service. However the food is not fully there, I expected much more from it. My pasta with mussels and porcini mushrooms (sounds promising, isn’t it?) was an overcooked and was lacking flavour and spices. Pizza with truffles was interesting with thin dough, but felt too dry and didn’t have much filling, even for Italian standards it felt too little. Fish carpaccio didn’t have very fresh fish, and I could feel ice on some pieces. Tiramisu was good, same as americano. I noticed that food quality in San Marino is in general a bit worse than in Italy, so it seems like a common problem. Therefore I would still recommend the restaurant, mainly because of the atmosphere and...

We had lunch there, everything was okay (just the truffle didn't taste like one) and we decided to go there for dinner too. We had to wait a few minutes until we get a third chair. Then, our pizzas arrived 40-45 minutes after we ordered them. Finally, we had to wait 20-25 more minutes for Panna cotta, even though it is pre-made and we could see it in the fridge. The waiter was constantly busy with something else (e.g., talking to one of the guests who was probably a friend of his) and it was hard to attract his attention. Finally, they told us we cannot pay by card if we are using the San Marino Discount Card - something we had actually done when we had lunch. The place and the food are okay, but the service...