🍝 Trattoria Pulcinella 🇬🇧

Madrid & Italian places for Pasta 🍝 in Madrid

Everything about our experience at Trattoria Pulcinella.

ℹ️ Useful information

📔 Menu
📍 Location: C. de Regueros, 7, Centro, 28004 Madrid

Review and Comments

⭐️ Score

📝 Summary

The food was good, although it lacked a little extra flavor. But what really disappointed us was the service. Although we went because we had received good recommendations, in our case the experience was not pleasant and it is not a place we would return to.

🍴Food

The food was good, but as I mentioned before, it lacked a little extra flavor.
The dish that really stood out was the pumpkin risotto, which was delicious.

Pane, Focaccia e Grissini 2.75€
A small snack while you wait for the starters was not bad, and the price is reasonable.

Parmigiana di Melanzane / Parmigiana della Nonna 16.5€
“Baked eggplant with San Marzano tomato sauce DIP, basil, and Parmesan cheese”.
One of the most typical Italian dishes, not to be missed.

Caponata Sicilianape 11,5€
“Sicilian-style ratatouille with eggplant”.
A Sicilian dish that you won’t find in every Italian restaurant. Highly recommended if you want to try something different.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara 16.5€
“With egg yolk, real guanciale, Pecorino Romano cheese, and black pepper”.
A classic dish that did not disappoint. The pasta was very creamy and flavorful.

Spaghetti alla Nerano 15.9€
“With zucchini, black pepper, provola cheese, Parmesan, and fresh basil”.
The pasta was fine, but it didn’t have much flavor. The zucchini was a little overcooked, so it was dry and tasteless. Plus, the sauce didn’t add any flavor to the dish either.

Spaghetti alla Vongole 20,5€
“With clams, datterino cherry tomatoes, and a touch of chili pepper”.
The dish was good overall, but it needed a little something extra to give it more flavor.

Risotti alla Zucca 13.5€
“With pumpkin, goat cheese, and sage”.
The best dish ever! It was tasty and creamy, a real pleasure to eat.

Full menu:

🍷 Drinks

In our case, standard drinks (beer and soft drinks) cost 3.50 – 3.90€.
So the prices were reasonable.

💶 Price

💰 30-50€

In our case, it was around 30€ per person for 4 people, sharing two starters, one main course, one drink, and one bread service per person.
If you prefer to have a starter, a main course, a dessert, a drink, and bread, it would be around 47€ per person, depending on what you order.

👥 Staff

The biggest disappointment at the restaurant was the staff, as we had several run-ins with them, which made the experience a bit negative.

The first was as soon as we arrived at the restaurant and told them about our reservation. They told us to wait because we were 3 minutes early and they couldn’t seat us until the exact time of our reservation. Even if I can understand it, I think it’s a bit excessive only for 3 minutes.
In addition, the maître was not polite at all and made us wait at the door, where there is little space and the waiters kept bumping into us.
So, we ended up leaving the restaurant and coming back in after three minutes, and this time they agreed to seat us.
Therefore, we were very disappointed with this first contact and poor reception.

The second problem arose when we went to order our food. The waiter didn’t ask us what we wanted to eat; he just assumed what starters we would order and imposed them on us. We had to insist several times that we didn’t want those and that we had other starters in mind. The waiter still didn’t write down what we wanted, and we had to argue that we had decided to have other dishes and didn’t want the ones he was suggesting, or rather, imposing on us. He justified them with different arguments and by saying that the portions would be too large, but he contradicted himself.

Finally, the main courses arrived shortly after we had started on the starters. We didn’t have time to finish them, as the main courses were already getting cold.

In short, the service was not good at all and made for a bad experience.

📍Place

The restaurant is small and there are many tables, which are quite close together. In our case, we had a table against the wall, so the two people who had to walk past it could barely fit, and on the other side, the other two people almost bumped into the table behind.

In addition, with such a small space and so many tables and people, the place became very noisy, which did not help us enjoy the moment.

⏳ Time

The reservation did not have an explicit time limit, but there was considerable pressure from the waiters not to delay. Therefore, in 1 hour and 15 minutes, we were already heading out the door.

Find out more about Madrid: