La Rusticana

I ve eaten in some pretty bad restaurants worldwide but this so called restaurant is the worst. We booked a table for four at 7.30pm on Saturday 23/08/08 and were seated for that time. We ordered a bottle of wine which was on tasting corked, this bottle was replaced by another corked bottle which the waiter said was fine in his opinion. We ordered another type of wine which was also corked.

Then we ordered the food two starters and four main courses the starters arrived in a reasonable time but the pepper stuffed with seafood was tasteless to say the least. We then waited for over an hour for the main course to be served. We were on the point of leaving just as the mains arrived. The pasta dish was overcooked,bland and anaemic looking and this in an Italian restaurant. Two of the steaks were on the cool side the other was fine. The sauce was the chefs speciality I m glad I didnt have his run of the mill dish as his special sauce was disgusting, bland and cloyingly thick. Tasteless muck I think Gordon Ramsay would call it probably with an expletive or two thrown in.

The service was very. very poor as we were ignored most of the time( probably because of the wine fiasco) We will never return to La Rusticana and would never recommend it to anyone. The food is no more Italian than I am, is poorly prepared and overpriced.
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Thomas McNeill
Monday, August 25, 2008

The staff were friendly enough but could have used another waiter or two to deal with the 8pm rush on a Saturday evening during the Festival. Needed four requests to get a jug of water. Extensive menu of all the Italian standards but all of our meals were tired and uninspired from what felt like a production line rather than a kitchen. Not over expensive, though, and the house wine was decent.
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Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 4
Saturday, August 16, 2008