Gran Cafe Luogo Dato Al Ristoro

To be frank, the Grand Café was the only restaurant that could accommodate my drop-by dinner visit on a busy Saturday evening in Bologna. As such, I expected to only have an average meal; however, found their fettuccine with a large helping of porcini to be delicious. My main dish of steak which was a thick filet mignon cut was cooked as requested. The waiter also served at the front of the house and was effective, but not welcoming. Still, this is a restaurant on my return list and may try the pizza the next time, as it seemed quite popular with the local Italian diners.

The place looked quite charming from the outside, the open kitchen visible from the street raised our trust that Gran Cafe would be a decent place to eat at. We had pizzas, which were the least tasty in all Bologna. The cover price is 3 EUR each, which is surprising, as the interior is far from what the outside suggests, and the toilet was totally unacceptable. Dirty, with no toilet seat. The small pizza joints provide much better food and service in the area.

Really good food in a good-sized restaurant on a pedestrian street in old Bologna. Waiter was very helpful and spoke excellent english. Large window into the kitchen containing a large pizza oven. Nice to see your pizza being prepared and cooked.

The food is really bad. The service is awful. Loud techno music, uninterested waiters, dodgy owners and at the end a bill you would never imagine even in your nightmares! Two of us ate a pizza for 4€ and 8€ and drank two glasses of coke. The bill was for 29,80€! They overcharged the pizzas and drinks on purpose and added a mysterious coperto , what supposed to be service charge, though at the bottom it said tips are not included . Our bill should have been 16€ maximum, so they wanted us to pay for a fake bill of 24€ and 5,80€ service charge, which is not a service charge, for one of the worst services ever. When we said we will not pay, the waiter shouted with us and said he lets us go, if we pay 25€ . We paid and left, because we did not want to end up in fight. All the people who were there (owners and friends) looked like dodgy gangsters, so we just wanted to get out.

Where do you go when you just got of the train just after lunch time, are hungry and you don’t know the city. You can’t plan everything and that gets boring after awhile anyway, so we walked into this place and got a great meal. Pizza with a half-liter of house wine. Order the salad that comes with the spicy salami. It was great!