Ed S.
Yelp
Very mixed experience. Expensive. Great food. Bad service. Slightly unpleasant meal for us, despite the fact that the food is terrific, which almost never happens because we're not sticklers on service.
This review is for foodie tourists, in particular American foodie touists. The most important things to know about this place are:
1) The food is fantastic. It really is. This is a strict seafood place that only serves a handful of things, so don't deviate too much from what everyone else is having.
2) It's huge and popular late at night, so the seating can vary from the nice romantic topside tables to the tourist dungeon in the basement.
3) In order to really enjoy this place, you have to know what you are doing. Which is not that easy if you don't speak Italian, speak really bad Italian, or your waiter doesn't help you out. Which is likely to happen because the service here is bad for the price you pay. If you don't order properly you can get really screwed.
This is an expensive place, and we overordered by a longshot. The hot antipasti is a good deal, almost enough for a meal in itself, and it comes out 1 item at a time as soon as the kitchen knocks it out. Which would be fine, except we also ordered pasta, and everything came out so fast we didn't have time to eat it before the pasta came out. So there were about 5 different dishes on the table at once when the pasta arrived. The antipasti we had included fried squash blossoms, prawns with artichokes, and I forget what else but it was all very tasty. The ravioli was really good. The spaghetti with squid, not so much. The flavors were nice, but the squid was overcooked and the spaghetti was undercooked, even by Italian standards. Al dente is one thing, outright crunchy is another. We wanted to order some fish, and after an unhelpful exchange with our waiter, ended up getting a whole turbot at 7.50 Euro per 100 grams, which is, that's right, a $100 fish. It was roasted whole, so that the fins turned crispy. Tasted amazing - super fresh, cooked perfectly, but a whole 1kg turbot for 2 people that were already stuffed from improper ordering is a lot to ask.
Everyone else around us (i.e. the locals) were almost all in big tables of about 5-8 people, and all ordered shared family-style platters of prawns over potatoes and tomatoes. It looked awesome. The group of loud Asian businessmen next to us had what seems to be one whole lobster per person, plus plenty of wine. It was pretty loud and boisterous. Had we been able to have just the antipasti and a scaled-down version of the prawns, it would've been a better experience.
So my advice is to try this place if you're into seafood, but try and order what everyone else is ordering. And if you don't have a big group, see if the waiter can scale your meal to a proper size.