Vicari

Vicari. This is a restaurant that my husband and I discovered 4 years ago in the town of Noto and we go back every year. This is a great restaurant run by Salvatore Vicari. Each year we have come back the restaurant gets better and the menu more daring but always superbly presented We have never been disappointed with our meal. Traditional dishes have been revisited in his way with a delicate touch and with great care and respect of traditional cuisine. However the savoury part of the menu far out ranks the sweet. This a definite must when in Noto as to skip it would be a great service to yourself. The restaurant has been done with great taste and the service fluid and professional

The staff was courteous but we had to wait a long time between servings and at the end, after asking for the bill twice, I ended up going inside to pay, where there was already a line of three people waiting (probably sharing my same situation). The feeling was that they were either understaffed or not well coordinated. Starters were excellent but main dishes and desserts nothing special. In my opinion overpriced, you find same or better food and better service at a lower price elsewhere.

One of the worst experience in Sicily, the location is nice and the restaurant presents itself very well, but unfortunately both service and quality of food is not at the level you would expect. We were two couples: one couple had ordered 2 starters and 2 primi and the other couple had ordered 2 primi and 2 secondi; we had asked the waitress to bring the starters together with the primi of the couple without starters so that we could eat all together but after having waited for over an hour (without even bread), they brought only the starters, so one couple had to watch the others eating; the starters were good, the best part of the meal. By that time we had finished our Prosecco and we asked for some wine by the glass: the primi arrived and no sign of the waiter specialised in wines. We had the primi without wines, we wait some time and still no wines even though we had repeatedly asked. Then the tuna steaks arrived: we had ordered three of them, all cooked medium; two were ok (more towards raw) but one was completely raw. We told a waiter who started saying it wasn’t raw, then after showing him the difference with the other two he went into the kitchen and came back saying the chef cooks it like this to avoid the tuna becoming too hard: we had tuna few days later somewhere else and it wasn’t raw neither hard. Needless to say that the raw tuna wasn’t eaten. When the bill came, with much surprise we found that we had been billed also for the raw steak; at the moment of paying, when asked how was the dinner, we mentioned the tuna and the only answer was “I’m sorry”. The impression we had is that it is just a touristic place with new people everyday so satisfaction of customers is not really taken into consideration, regardless of all the philosophy presented in the menu. I’ve been to Sicily and Noto almost every year since I was a kid, there are way much better places where to eat.

Nice atmosphere but the food is not as good as it looks. Wouldn’t come back!

Divine food, lovely service, fantastic wine pairing, atmospheric setting