Trattoria Da Mino — Restaurant in Venice

UPDATE NOTICE Feb 2022: This restaurant has changed their billing process to practically scam patrons. See more below. You can read my previous 5 star review below. Unfortunately, our latest visit changed our opinion, although the food remains good. Why are we now giving only 1 star to this restaurant? They are one of only a few restaurants in Sarasota county to start offering separate pricing for credit cards. Translation: they're now passing on the normal cost of business to clients. But the scam is that they hand you a check with completely different itemized prices than shown on their menu. (E.g., two glasses of wine at $7.00 ea on the menu comes out itemized as $14.56. What???) They obviously expect guests to just ignore this and pay it. They figure it's just too complicated, right? Well on first glance, you might assume it's sales tax. But calculating the difference, we realize they're adding 4% surcharge to every item for credit card costs, by default (not that this is transparent in any way). These higher charges are subtotalled, and then tax is added on. They then show a reduced number if you choose to pay cash. We decided not to waste time calculating the correct tax, but we can only assume you pay an inflated tax as well, should you opt to pay cash, which would definitely be disingenuous, and probably fraudulent. Let's face it. How many people are going to waste time verifying their checks like this. They'll just round off and pay it. But these types of unfair pricing policies will catch up with owners. Many will say, just take the unfair surcharge off the tip, and pass the cost back to the company. Yes, they end up scamming their servers as well with this policy. But the clincher is that, restaurant owners who adopt this policy of scamming guests over their refusal to own credit card costs, don't realize that in the long run they screw themselves. Inevitably they alienate a portion of their clientele who don't want to be taken as stupid, and who will refuse to patronize their restaurant any longer. Simple math will teach these owners that by penalizing clients in this way, for each and every client they lose permanently due to 4% credit card surcharges, they need to retain 25 other permanent clients to replace the revenue lost from that 1 client, thus only breaking even. Are they really winning with this strategy? Very shortsighted management.

Will we continue patronizing this restaurant? Probably, but we will ensure management and staff bear the cost of every penny of unreasonable and non-transparent costs they try to hit us with. Prepare yourself with awareness and a calculator.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: For a place that some may consider a pizza joint, the food (pasta) and presentation is excellent. We've been to all the Italian restaurants in downtown Venice, and this one and Made in Italy are best. Forget the rest on the basis of cost...

I am extremely disappointed after my recent visit to Trattoria Da Mino. We chose to sit outside on a Saturday night without a reservation, which was accommodated immediately, but that was where the positive aspects of our evening ended. After being seated, we experienced significant delays: it took a long time before anyone greeted us and asked our drink orders. A waiter came to our table introduced himself, took our drink orders, and disappeared. At least 15 minutes went by and another waiter came introduced himself and asked us what we would like to drink. We told him we already placed a drink order, and he said "Yes, well, uhm, I will be your waiter now, what can I get you to drink?". The initial lack of service by confusion between two waiters, leading to even more delays and us waiting at least 40 minutes just to receive drinks and a basket of bread for that matter.

The food, unfortunately, did not make up for the poor service. Three of us ordered classic spaghetti and meatballs, priced at $23 a plate, which lacked any sort of flavor or zest. The consensus among us was that it was profoundly unsatisfactory, with one of the girls barely touching her dish only eating a couple of bites, and another girl remarking that Chef Boyardee from a can tasted better. It really lacked of any taste.

The reason for the neglect became apparent as our waiters were mostly engaged with a large group of non-guests at the other side of our seating area, neglecting their duties towards dining customers. The group they were entertained by appeared to be a group of friends and were occupying the space in front of the building adjacent to the restaurant. This lack of professionalism contributed significantly to our negative experience.

I however can not explain the reason for the lack of flavor in our meals. It is quite possible the chef was also being entertained by the outside group of friends, but since we do not know what the chef looked like, I can only comment on the two waiters enjoying themselves at the expense of the patrons.

I regret to say that this was one of the worst dining experiences I've had. Despite the location or ambiance, the lack of attentive service and subpar food quality at Trattoria Da Mino it makes it a place I simply...

First of all, the service was horrible! Our waitress didn't give us straws with our drinks and when we asked for straws she acknowledged and said ok but instead of getting the straws she headed straight to another table and totally forgot about our request for straws. Then the salad came with a serving of sliced bread. None of the salad came with the dressing we ordered. She never came back to our table so we had to ask another waitress for our salad dressing. When we're finished with our salad and the bread, she took our bowls and promised to bring more bread as we're still waiting for our main meals. She never came back with the bread even after our meals were brought out. I ordered Vegana, which was listed as one of their signature dishes, and described as penne with roasted zucchini, eggplant, broccoli and olive oil and garlic. This main course "signature" dish was a total disappointment. It was so bad and tasteless. It was basically pre-boiled penne with steamed vegetables, they were not grilled, and that's it. Absolutely no flavor at all because there's no olive oil that was supposedly spiced and cooked with roasted garlic. No oil. No garlic. No roasting. No grilling. Not even salt in the flavor. I was too hungry and impatient at that point, I just ate what I could. The waitress only came to check on us at the very end after I basically stopped eating halfway, in full disgust, and couldn't touch it anymore. I was left speechless, couldn't wait to leave fast enough, expressed my total disappointment only in the form of tip I left on the table. It's really beyond help. No complaint from me could improve the situation. And I didn't want to make a scene in front of the person I was with...