Hotel Pietrapanna

This hotel-restaurant has simple rooms, very good food and great service. The family running it is kind and accommodating. It’s wonderfully quiet out here, with peaceful villages and parkland around, mountain views, and hardly any traffic. We saw wild horses and loads of cows grazing.

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The place is beautiful and exceptionally peaceful, with clean rooms and great facilities for adults and children. The food was the letdown. I’ve visited similar places for years, and while the prices are around average, the menus are meager, with few typical local products and not much of them. I don’t expect to return for the next few years. People who went years ago say the service and food have recently deteriorated.

The bill was hefty, and the owners were rude. They basically said that if we didn’t like what they cooked or how they cooked it, we could go somewhere else. Fine, but they didn’t need to make that so clear to people coming for a Sunday outdoors. I read that the owner had lived in Germany and then returned. Did they expect us to roll out the red carpet because he came back to invest here? He should at least do it properly. Inside, the chimney smoke was so strong it made my eyes water from beginning to end. That was heartbreaking. A lot of what we tried to order wasn’t on the menu. We’re happy to eat anything, so we switched to familiar appetizers, cured meats and cheeses. Nothing special, though at least they were local. The pasta arrived an hour after the appetizer. We asked for water several times and nobody listened. The house wine came in a glass jar with a hair stuck to the outside. At least it wasn’t inside, but who knows how they washed it. The pasta was badly overcooked and the crusco peppers limp. I didn’t expect that at a Lucanian agriturismo. I asked for bread more than once, and they joked that I should save room for the second course, as if it would be huge. Instead we got literally two pork ribs with very little meat, and hardly any of the supposed mixed roast meat. Lots of drama, poor quality.