One-off Italian meals in the EU - 1 of 2…read more
By one-off, I mean that it was a situation where you were just passing through. Why was I passing through Seville? Well, it's another way to get to the Algarve in Portugal by a nicely priced and comfortable enough motor coach ride if you couldn't find a cheap enough air ticket to Lisbon from Italy. I was walking down the street somewhere in between a strip of hotels and Seville's impressive Santa Justa train station and Montolivo caught my eye.
First, I'll go with the positive things. It's very nice inside. The other is that the employees were friendly. Like others have said, they don't come around much and this was lunch and it wasn't at all busy, but when they did, they were reasonably on point. Finally, the prices were fair for their lunch offerings.
So far, it sounds like everything was going fairly well. I ordered a plate of lasagna and a Sprite. As soon as the lasagna arrived, something didn't sit with me. It looked very upright, almost like a rectangular pastry slice, and its appearance and coloring were atypical. As I started to eat this lasagna, it did not taste good at all. It was rather tasteless. I'm giving them a 4 for all the other parts of the experience but the food was a 1 and that's what governs.
I went into Montolivo with an open mind. That's because I have had some incredible Italian food in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile) but that could be that they are very steeped in being part of the Italian diaspora. I still dream about a cheap and delicious cannelloni lunch special near the main station in Vina del Mar, Chile (the resort beach city west of inland Santiago de Chile, the capital). It rivaled anything I've eaten in Italy. I've also been served good pasta dishes at simple diners in Quebec. That said, located but a low cost 2-hour Ryanair flight from Italy, you'd think the Spaniards could muster up the know-how to cook decent Italian food.
I am a little surprised by some glowing reviews. It could be that Americans and Spaniards like anything put forth to them as being Italian food. It could be that I didn't order some other things that they might have prepared better. Just like there are Italian eateries in America that are not Italian, but Italian-American, it could be that this is a Spanish restaurant that serves up how they like to put together Italian dishes. I did not like my meal at Seville's Montolivo.