This was an amazing meal. The best lunch we had on vacation (we only went out for lunch)!! This is…read morea beautiful restaurant in an old building. They do have outdoor seating but we loved eating indoors with the cooling effect of the stone building. The service was outstanding!! They had a pre fixed meal but we opted for a la carte. We loved the sparkling wine we started with. It was a brut nature. There were 4 of us so we just shared everything. We started with the prawn carpaccio, it was amazing!! Everything we ordered was delicious but our hands down favorite was the black truffle ravioli. The rabbit tortellini had a lovely red sauce and I don't even like red sauce! It was so good!! That was our second favorite. The pappardella was the last to come out and it was also amazing. The gnocchi was tender and delicious as well. The seafood in it was tender and perfectly cooked. While we may have had favorites it did not decrease the deliciousness of every single thing we ate!! We only ordered one main, and it was the best duck breast we've ever had anywhere!! We also ordered two desserts, which were great. One was a deconstructed tiramisu and the other a pistachio semifreddo. Highly recommend this restaurant for service and food!!

Amazing food! We had the spaghetti with seafood and the octopus. Thus far, this is the best…read morerestaurant we've had in La Spezia.

A very lovely spot located on a beautiful street. The mista salad was only fair because of the…read morebitter greens they incorporated into it. The pizza was good but not great and the Branzino was dry. Service was so so, we had to fetch the waiter to take our order. If we had had a great experience we would of course come back tomorrow.

Pretty decent but not over the top good authentic Italian. It tasted more commercialized than…read moreauthentic...especially the pasta.

Everything was perfect... food was delicious. Tried the focaccia, lasagna, panacotta and cannoli…read morefor dinner. Came back for great breakfast with some eggs and fresh fruit tarts. Service was exceptional and the owner and all the staff loved to interact with customers, so be open to chatting a bit

We were only in Vernazza for 2 days, but visited Il Pirata multiple times. The main guy running the…read morecafe is very chatty and runs the pastry side of the business, while his brother apparently runs the rest of the food menu. Everything we tried was delicious, and appealed to me more than the super-touristy spots further down the road (though obviously most of the clientele here are also tourists). Prices seemed reasonable for the amount/quantity of food. Most importantly, Il Parata sells toilet paper, which proved hard to come by in Vernazza. Be sure to arrive before 5pm if you want food (outside of cannolis, which were available later).

I was in Lucca and stopped here for dinner. The reviews were good and the menu online showed more…read morefish being offered I thought they would have more seafood, but being in Tuscany, I realized that most places don't. That's OK. The inside was very homey and nice. The owners, I believe are a husband and wife team who are helpful. Salmon carpaccio was an appetizer special - it was excellent Swordfish for the main was a mistake. Should have stuck with a pasta. This fish looked like it was frozen and it's was fair, nothing special. Tiramisu for dessert was so good. totally made up for the swordfish. It was made fresh that day and you could tell. This and the service raised the rating from to 4.

Both the gorgonzola gnocchi and the lasagna were some of the best dishes we have had in Lucca…read more Great service and a super helpful staff

Hidden trattoria, some troubles with parking, otherwise tasty hone-made delicious meals, cozy…read moreplace. Service is OK!

We found this gem thanks to yelp and stopped for a late lunch... Walking in we didn't expect much,…read morebut the food was delicious. Chicken that took me back to childhood, nicely flavored steak, pesto lasagna? Yes, please! A couple of days earlier we had chocolate cake and tiramisu in Florence. These were so much better so as to render the Florence version unrecognizable. Excellent, friendly service, even with our limited Italian. Thank you! Great stop!

Walked by this place in the afternoon looking for the laundromat and arrived just as they closed…read morefor the afternoon siesta so we were unable to grab some lunch. We decided to go for a late dinner as we had enjoyed what we had seen at the tail end of the lunch service. What a great choice! We were seated at a table for two across from the pass through from the kitchen. Normally I would not be overly pleased with this seat location, but the sheer volume of activity made it the place to be. We watched as a large number of dishes at a time were assembled and whisked off to their awaiting guests. We ordered a bottle of red wine from our server, an older Gentleman that clearly was one of the people in charge of the floor. We determined a couple of appetizers and ordered from him our selections. He immediately made us aware that our selections were not what we should order, given our wine selection and the specialties of the house. He couldn't have been more right as our appy's of spinach and pumpkin stuffed ravioli's in a butter sauce and tortellini in brodo (chicken broth) was outstanding. The lovely K found the brodo on the salty side, but I found it to be terrific. We make our own chicken stock at home, painstakingly using old fashioned methods, no salt added and found that this broth had a depth of flavour that is difficult to replicate. The ravioli's were superb, the pasta beautiful and delicate and the filling amazing. Our secondi, we had breaded veal for myself and grilled rib eye for K. We got to chatting with a German couple and her Father as our second course arrived and did not finish either. That said both were well prepared and although the only things on the plate (we passed on the accompaniments off the cart as we were already getting full) they were again perfectly prepared. The atmosphere is what one would expect from a place that caters to families, especially on a the Sunday of a long weekend. The following day was a national holiday (Liberation Day) so spirits were high, and the volume loud. People wander from table to table visiting. We watched a Grandpa, Grandma and Mother walk around with a baby each taking turns while the others visited. It was a heartwarming and stomach satisfying experience in the middle of Italy that we will not soon forget. Dining in places like this is what Italy and family dining is all about. To illustrate this further the German couple and her Father we met by chance as they were at the table beside us we will be dining with in Rome later on this week, how does it get better than that.

Nice Reggio restaurant that I imagine is one of the spots the locals like to go to. Unpretentious,…read morewell-made regional cuisine.

Great restaurant. We had a raw fish sampler as an appetizer which was excellent. My wife ordered…read morethe swordfish and it was cooked perfectly. Highly recommend this place.

Good reviews so we decided to try it. Bread was weird more like a biscuit than bread. I had gnocchi…read morewith meat sauce and my husband had the spaghetti with clams, white wine and chilis. Gnocchi was okay. Huge portions - I couldn't eat a third of it. My husband's pasta was okay but pretty bland and didn't have much sauce or spice to it. Portions are huge, location is good, food is mediocre. Prices are readable. $49 euros included a bottle of wine.

I can confirm what has already been posted here. Yes, it is hard to find (look for the Hausbrandt…read moresign, see pic). Yes, there is in fact a grandma cooking the food (just as Jeff J. said, two in fact). Yes, the food is amazing. Maybe the reason this place is so hard to find is that it is a hidden gem that feels so authentic that you only hear whispers about it. But it is real folks. We started our meal with the fried polenta with ragu. The combination is a meal in itself. You can tell the ragu was fresh and well made because you could see the chunky bits of garlic, mushrooms and meat. The next course was the lasgna. It was rich with the ragu and ricotta. The noodles tasted homemade. It was a delicious dish blessed by a nonna. The last course was the steak Florentine. You can order it by weight. My conversion math may have been off because we got a HUGE cut of porterhouse. But it was absolutely tender and delicious. We enjoyed this delight to the bone. The service was exceptional. We were the only non-Italian folks in the restaurant but we were treated like family. I will also add that while I enjoyed our food selection, I noticed that the pizzas and pork/veal shank were also very popular and looked incredibly appetizing. My only regret is that we found this gem of a restaurant on our last night in Barga. I wish I had more time to taste more of the menu. The family owns another restaurant in Lucca (la Donna Clara) and one that's 3 km away that does seafood.

Writing this review is ridiculously painful because figuring out how we got there and its address…read morewas impossible. Their "webpage" is on Facebook, but their address on Facebook is inaccurate (stating that it's in Lucca city). On the receipt, there are two addresses, their page on TripAdvisor is matches one of the address on the receipt. When I put down the address here, the location on Yelp doesnt seem right. I tried to Google Map this place, but street images were taken in 2011, and this place wasnt opened yet. Long story short, we were driving down from Renaissance Tuscany Il ciocco resort on the SP20 looking for a restaurant, and happened to turn into this one off the side. It seemed like a traditional Italian restaurant you see on TV with cozy red chequered table cloths, a wood fire oven, and ladies behind the counter busy making pizza and pasta for you. We ordered a 4 seasons pizza (6EUR) and a personal sized lasagna (8EUR) - both of which came out of the wood oven! It was so delicious. We came in just before noon and there was only one other table filled but as we were leaving this place filled almost to the max and when we were driving out, people were waiting for our parking spot! WIth a beer and capuccion, our total was only 18.50 for too and we were so full.We really felt it was traditional Italian home cooking - awesome comfort food. We are still wishing to go back!

Our party of 5 had a reservation which they asked for when we walked in, even tho we were early and…read morethe restaurant was empty. The menu is printed in Italian on one page and English on the other sinus easy to follow We ordered the burrata salad made from heirloom tomatoes and it was delicious with oil and balsamic vinegar. The soup had mixed reviews: one of us loved it while the other didn't. The eggplant Parmesan was flavorful as was the lasagne bolognese. Vermentino wine and house red were very drinkable. Service was excellent.

best dining experience in Santa Margherita . excellent food, friendly service. highly recommend…read more deconstructed pesto lasagna and the grilled fish, excellent