Osteria Bartolini

We had a lunch at this place in July 2026. It is located just a short stroll away the main piazza in Bologna and when we got there, it turned out that we had walked past it before without noticing it. It is a bit elevated above the road and under a huge tree, there is a great garden to enjoy a lunch in the shade. This is a seafood place and we enjoyed a bowl of mussels and seafood risotto. The mussels came with "fries" that turned out to be delicious slices of potato that had been deep fried and sprinkled with salt and a bit of rosemary. If was freshly made and the rosemary gave it a wonderful aroma. There were not many people there and for us it was great to have a lunch in this quiet oasis in the middle of town. If you are looking for a seafood lunch in Bologna and want to sit outside, you should consider going to Osteria Bartolini !

When we arrived we were amazed by the location but that was mostly it. For a Michelin recommended Restaurant we were very disappointed. The service was okay. The pasta and sardines were very simple but good. For the rather elevated price we would have expected a bit more. But all in all the primi were good. The most disappointing part was the desert. Both were just very sweet and weren’t very refined flavour and texture wise. So for an aperitif and lunch with just a main dish, it’s okay

The restaurant looks nice but the food was really dissapointing, not rising up to expectations. We had Sardocini and Vongole as apetizers and Gran Fritto di Pesce as main. All were very bland, lacked salt and honestly mediocre. The gran fritto was very oily and tasteless, had only few bites of it and left the rest on the plate. The service was decent but did not acknowledge at all feedback regarding the food besides an empty reply "it is a different concept". In general a disapointed experience!

I ate here for the first time with my husband and his family (unlike me, they go once almost every year). The place is well-decorated. The food is tasty, I enjoyed it. The staff are friendly, the prices are moderately high, but still reasonable. The service was very slow: a good two hours for shared first courses and shared fried foods. In the meantime, we’d asked for information once, only to be told that our dishes were arriving. Meanwhile, they’d served two tables near us who’d arrived after us and had ordered the same dishes as us.