YIKES! It pains me to write my very first (and hopefully last) 1-star review, and I truly hope my opinion may someday by swayed....but for now, 1-star for Dal Cavaliere. Buckle up your seatbelts folks, this is going to be a bumpy ride.
My first experience here was about a month and a half ago. I had just moved to Haidhausen, and I was pretty stoked to see not one, but TWO quaint Italian restaurants super close to my apartment (in retrospect, I should have went to the other). Anywho, my friend and I entered, stood there for a moment making awkward eye contact with the servers, and then received the signal that we should seat ourselves. After finding a suitable place a server walked by and said we couldn't sit there, though there was no reservation sign. So we brushed it off and found another table, only to be told we also couldn't sit there (again, no reservation sign). Finally we just told the server to point us to a table where we COULD sit. PHEW, finally a seat.
Next came the menu.....thought I think it's great that the menu is in Italian (with German words like "und" and "mit" used sparingly throughout), my friend and I don't speak Italian, so we only understood about half of the menu. We asked the server if there was a German menu available and he said (at least we THINK he said) "No, I can describe the menu to you if you like". However, his German was soooo insanely bad it literally sounded like gibberish. Neither myself nor my German friend could decipher any of what he said even after asking him to repeat himself. I'm not trying to make fun of the guy, but really, if you don't offer a menu in German in GERMANY, then at least be able to describe the food to guests. Perhaps they DO in fact have a German menu and the server just didn't know what we were asking for? Hmmm one of life's true mysteries.
Sigh....so after that ordeal we just went with two "safe" options. We split a pizza and a pesto pasta. Though the pizza was okay at best, the pesto pasta was terrible. The noodles were not fully cooked, and the pesto was more of a creamy green sauce(that's really the only way to describe it). We didn't finish our food, and by that point we simply just wanted to go home. Not a fun experience.
Because this review is already getting quite long, I won't give you the whole story for my second experience there. It was just as bad. The only reason I went back in the first place was because Dal Cavaliere has outdoor seating that was in direct sunlight, and I couldn't convince my friends that eating there was a bad idea. One "highlight" of the night was when my girlfriends and I ordered the super basic bread with tomato sauce. It came our as a flavorless tomato sauce pizza. We weren't expecting anything amazing. We just wanted something to pair with our wine, but it was plain bad. When we told our server we didn't like it and asked if we could send it back, he was so insulted. I have never seen a server take such offense to something so minor.
Long story short. I won't be going back here any time soon. In fact, it would have to be a miracle to get me inside Dal Cavaliere again :( read more