La Ciau Del Tornavento

"TLDR; This Michelin Star was clearly awarded years ago and they have just forgotten to come review this restaurant again recently. The staff was inexperienced and uninformed, the food is uninspired and served poorly. AVOID! Longer Review: You enter the restaurant through a small glass anteroom that is where they permit smoking and the ashtrays are filled with cigarette butts. The door is broken and the customized carpet with the name of the restaurant on it is falling apart. That should give you a good indication of the kind of experience you 've signed up for. The background music is played too loud to just be ambient and, even though you 're in the heart of Piedmont, the music is a terrible muzak channel of arranged jazz influenced acoustic renditions from 1980 2000 by Sting, Paul Simon and Journey interspersed with multiple songs from the movie Shrek. The tasting menus look compelling but everyone at the table is required to order the same thing for you to be allowed to take part. For us that wasn 't even a possibility as everyone had different opinions on what they wanted for lunch. Ordering a la carte is a clumsy affair with multiple dishes designed to be eaten family style listed on the same page as individual appetizers. The menu is also long enough to rival a Cheesecake Factory with their house specialties finally showing up on page 10. The wine list is MONSTROUS. It 's meant to be intimidating and, when you get offered a tour of their cellar after your meal you 'll understand that it 's a big show bravado by the owner and I thought it was designed to make every guest feel like they 're 'less than '. 65,000 bottles to choose from? After ordering wine and food you 'll receive an amuse bouche that will be the highlight of your meal. Enjoy it, the slide downhill into malaise will happen shortly after. There were three of us at lunch and we ordered: Frog Legs (meant for 2 which was more than enough because they 're so bland that you 'll only want to eat one each and there are 8 on the plate) Foie Gras (included two slices of terrine paired with a single raspberry and compote, some smoked foie gras with small chunks of walnut and thin strips of granny smith apple, and a third portion of some sliced 'meat ' of unrecognizable origin that was completely devoid of any taste. It also came with 4 toast points of what was billed as 'hazelnut bread ' but it just tasted stale) Snails with smoked foie gras (barely any foie gras with a giant pile of 2 dozen snails over an odd pecorino cheese sauce) Before sharing the details of our entrees it 's important to comment on the service level: A Michelin Star is awarded based on five criteria with the fifth being a consistently excellent experience. That 's hard to quantify but it 's easy for anyone to know when service isn 't excellent. Our waiters were not informed about the items on the menu and apathetic, failed to clear the table in a timely manner and did not clean crumbs until after our dessert (especially important given the number of food items that were meant to be eaten by hand). Direct example: when our appetizers were brought out our waitress didn 't make eye contact while mumbling a poor description of the food while looking away in a distracted manner. I was also asked, in each course, Is this what you ordered? Our entrees were: Goat served two ways* with some soggy vegetables and a potato chip standing vertically in a small pile of uninspired mashed potatoes Fried Veal served with the exact same soggy vegetables (think chicken fried steak but without any gravy) Fried Lamb served with fried veal brain, fried apple and other fried items all the same color and served on a piece of paper *About 8 minutes after serving the goat a waiter walked back out and delivered a small side plate of the same random fried items that were paired with the fried lamb But most frustrating: two of our three entrees were served. It took 6 minutes for them to deliver the third entree so the first two items went cold during the wait. Disappointing."