Ciaro Italian — Restaurant in Birmingham

What am I missing?

The reviews on here are excellent, so we came here for an evening meal excited to try this authentic Italian restaurant. Honestly, we were so different in our views on the food, atmosphere and service compared to the other reviews that we checked if the good reviews had been written by staff.

We arrived in the tiny restaurant, and were immediately confused by the layout (no where to wait for a seat), we just had to stand in the middle of the main room over people who were eating. Eventually a server came over and took our reservation name etc. He was a man of few words and we were not greeted warmly as other people have said. We were placed on the nearest empty table which left one person sitting at 90 degrees to the first person, with their seat backing out into the room. We immediately changed to another table which had us facing each other. The waiter eventually came over to take our whole order including drinks after a fair wait. We ordered focaccia for starter with Gorgonzola which was delicious, fresh, warm, and well worth the calories. This was easily enough for 2 as a starter. An auspicious start I remarked.

The mains were very disappointing. I ordered the pomodoro grigliato e salsiccia. This was a fairly small portion of pasta with a sweet sauce and a crumbled Italian sausage, the amount of sausage was so small and any flavour was overcome by the sauce you wouldn’t have known it was there. My wife ordered mare e terra this was worse. The langoustine was on top but so little meat was in the langoustine and no meat was outside of this. The pasta was a bit boring and the pea purée was just ok. Really not worth the 24.5 we paid.

Drink was fine (sparkling wine). Served in a glass you would get from Asda, made me think of caravan holidays.

The atmosphere was not great, whole place felt rushed and somehow stressed. The walls were covered in murals which looked not great up close, and the place was heated by a cheap electric heater felt humid and close. Music was a weird mixture of Italian pop, was neither authentic or good to hear.

Still can’t get over the difference in our experience compared to the other reviews. Perhaps Birmingham is starved for good restaurants? But I know this...

WOW WOW WOW, what can I say. It’s like stepping in to your nonna house and being served beautiful authentic Italian food, with a simple yet well thought out menu.

The decor is very rustic and cute, with a great location, which adds to the atmosphere. My partner, our daughter and I came here. (My daughter is very particular when it comes restaurants especially her favourite cuisine, Italian, usually opting to go to the more bougie restaurants such as Riva blu, Fumo/San Carlo etc.) with they being said she said this is the best authentic Italian dishes she has ever had and Ciaro is now her favourite restaurant. We had for starter: Bruschetta - so fresh and Tasty. Burrata e prosciutto - tastes great. Focaccia bracket -11/10 by far the best focaccia we have ever had, it was served warm and was so light and airy with the perfect balance of olive oil and salt.

For main we had: Lasagne - Nice portion, well balance not overpowered by tomato. *Gamberi e limoncello - 10/10 simply stunning dish, with has incredible flavours. Linguine e granchio - lovely dishing, not shy with the crab meat.

Their blush rosé wine was also beautiful (sorry can’t remember the name but one of the best I have had)

The waiter Samir, is a very nice, welcoming and attentive gent, creating a warm and welcoming environment.

We would highly recommend this restaurant to anyone we honestly could not find any flaws and my very particular daughter has asked for this to be the restaurants for her birthday dinner (which is a massive compliment as she comes from the generation where she has to go to the latest hype/bougies restaurant that fits in to the Instagram grid) but she says the food is unbelievably good and would prefer Ciaro over anywhere else.

A* must try restaurant, and my family’s new favourite Italian, we are so glad we found this place and we can’t...

I have no idea if it was simply a very hectic and off-character evening for Ciaro, but this was by far the most disappointing meal and service we had on our week and a half trip across the UK.

We got seated quickly without a reservation, which was great. Our menus came a little late, but once we got our focaccia (which was really good) ordered and served to us, we were back on track, or so we thought.

Our mains arrived an hour after we had ordered, with no update on a delay. The mains were underwhelming, and likely because it took so long to be served without an apology or update. No one followed up for another glass of wine, or to refill waters. One of the servers seemed more keen to converse with her friends/family who were seated near us than to actually serve guests, and bragged about their 4.8 star rating here.

We finished our mains, sat around for 15 minutes waiting for someone to clear them, and asked for the bill. Took another 10 minutes for the bill to come, and had to catch the eye of a server twice for it to even happen. The table next to us didn’t seem to care about the service, but did express being underwhelmed by the food - so it wasn’t just us.

We’re dumbfounded, because everyone else seems to have had a great time here. We didn’t. Its location is perfect, and the atmosphere has so much potential. Hopefully it was just an off-night for them, but I sadly can’t recommend this place. I rarely give a restaurant a bad review, as I’m very understanding of the difficulty of running a restaurant. An apology and follow up would simply go a long way when things are going awry in...