| Subject: Re: Da Bruno Restaurant in Pisa HORRIBLE |
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Simona's suggestion to use Osterie D'Italia is a good one. Using foreign
guidebooks such as Frommer's for Italy are usually not good choices and
Michelin, while excellent for France, is not a reliable guide at all for
Italian cuisine. I have had dinners in several of Michelin's two and
three-star rated restaurants, and while good, tend to be more
international. The Italian restaurant guide books are much better choices.
Even though these are in Italian, there is usually no trouble for the
non-Italian speaker to understand the ratings of restaurants. So I recommend
that the first thing that the traveler to Italy do is to head to a bookstore
and buy and Italian restaurant guide. While I don't know the addresses off
hand, my guess is that some of these can be easily found on the web.
The current Italian restaurant guides that I have indicate that Da Bruno is not even worthy of a rating while Al Ristoro dei Vecchi Macelli (where Graciela had a good meal) was rated as having good cuisine and a fair price ($30 without wine). A Casa Mia, just outside of Pisa, is given an excellent cuisine rating with a fair price--actually just a bit less than Vecchi Macelli. Our experience with restaurants in Italy using Italian guidebooks has always been excellent. Also, the restaurants in the smaller towns or in the countryside tend to be better than those in the larger cities. Peter |