La Trappola - BAVENO

Oh Lord..where to begin?! We’ve travelled Italy extensively and know it’s harder to find bad food than an honest, family cooked meal, which is exactly what we appreciate. This restaurant was highly recommended, and rightly so, when we visited Baveno in 2007, 2012 and 2019 but, my oh my, how the mighty have fallen! We waited one and a half hours, then our mains arrived but, oops, we hadn’t had our starters then our starters came (they were ok), then a further long wait before our main courses reappeared, and I use that term advisedly as they were reheated/blasted in the microwave, which we chose not to eat as we didn’t think prawns, mussels and assorted fish would be safe to eat. Each time we (politely) remonstrated with the staff, about the delay and the food recycling, we ran into an aggressive defence of the restaurant, on two occasions being being physically dragged into the kitchen to inspect I don’t know what, in the face of confused kitchen staff who seemed equally perplexed as to their role in this puzzling interaction (not sure one could call them chefs). And as though that would reassure us and improve our evening! Numerous diners walked out during our tortuous evening and were similarly drawn into arguments with staff, all of whom lacked the honesty and humility to admit they’d got it wrong. If you think all Italian restaurants are great (my previous view) try La Trappola and be prepared to change your view. In fact, stay away. Italian food is the best in the world but this is a betrayal. Avoid.

I honestly don’t see why people give this restaurant a bad review , it is just such a good restaurant. Maybe we just ordered all the good stuff but it was very delicious, especially the pizza… When we first got there it was very busy and people where leaving which usually wasn’t a good sign, we where also planning to leave because it took 15 minutes to take our orders for drinks… but when it got a little bit less crowded they served us pretty fast and we got our food, I had the pizza funghi which I was sceptical about because there wasn’t much cheese on the pizza and the crust was very burned. When I tried the pizza it wasn’t that special but the more I ate the better it got, the pizza was mostly delicious because it was super juicy and it had a thin crust, it wasn’t that special but the juiciness just got me drooling. I don’t know what dish my dad had but it was very tasty, I’m not a meat lover but this meat was the best I ever ate I’ve never ate meat from a restaurant so I don’t know if it’s that good but in my opinion it was very good. I didn’t taste my moms dish but it looked very good! Conclusion: don’t go here when it’s busy and your pizza might just get burned

Nice down-to-earth restaurang with very good food, friendly service and cosy, familiar atmosphere. The food is much better than we expected from the looks of the restaurant and the menu and the prices are nice.

Il personale cortese e simpatico, il cibo ottimo, abbiamo mangiato la pizza ed era a dir poco favolosa.

Ambirnte tranquillo, personale cortese, pizza e menù di buona qualità.