Staying in the area and discovering charming Montecatani, we looked forward to this dinner. The restaurant got high praise. It is a small room with a terrace in a hotel. It feels like a hotel restaurant. The wait staff was hovering over us uncomfortably. We loved that they wanted to please, but we felt as though we had to please them!
The atmosphere in the restaurant is stuffy and a bit cloying. In many ways it felt like we had stepped back into the 1960s.
We had no complaints about it food. It was very good. Not extraordinary, but very good. For the prices, however, I expected extraordinary. The chef seems to be French-trained in an old fashioned kind of way. I remember eating that way with my parents.
What set me into inappropriate laughter were the translations in the English menu of Italian food. Aranchini were described as rice and cheese croquettes. It seemed to be deemed understandable to use the French "croquette", but not the Italian "aranchini". My favorite translations were an unappetizing sounding appetizer/anipasti: blue cheese and celery pie (apparently a gorgonzola flan) and the inexplicable secondi (entree) of mayonnaise and egg yolks. I did ask the waiter about the second one and learned it was was fish dish. Go figure.
In a town with so many interesting restaurants, La Pecora Nera would not my choice again and I don't recommend it unless you are bringing elderly dinner companions. We're not "kids" but this was not for us. read more