Il Poggio Del Cardinale

Loved it 👍👍👍👍

The food felt authentic and was really good. The setting is peaceful, tucked into the Cilento countryside, with a great view across the bay of Capo Palinuro.

The room itself was clean, but almost everything else about our return visit was a letdown. We’d enjoyed a night here last year, so came back for another one, and I’m glad it was only one night. This time our room was far from the property, and getting to the restaurant meant driving down a steep, unlit country road. That’s not great for children or older guests, and nobody mentioned it when we booked. Dinner also fell far short of last year. I’d talked up the appetizer we’d had before, but the portions were meager, the food didn’t seem fresh, and the bread was inedible. The tomato pasta had a strange metallic flavor, so my girls left it. Service and presentation were terrible. In the morning, we got to the restaurant at 8:15 and found it still closed. The waiter, who sleeps in a room beside it, seemed groggy and neglected, opened up, and went into the kitchen without welcoming us. We headed to the terrace where we’d eaten the night before. The table was still uncleared and covered in ants; the floor was dirty and full of them, and the sofas were filthy with caked-on urine. There was no hygiene at all. We left without breakfast. The owner wasn’t there, so we had him called. He was still asleep and showed up looking shabby. When we complained, he said ants were normal in the countryside and wouldn’t even take the breakfast cost off our room. We won’t come back.

We came back after a good stay last year and left feeling indignant. The breakfast room was the last straw: after about 20 minutes, the waiter appeared at 8:30, clearly just woken up, and led us in. It hadn’t been cleaned since dinner, with dirt marks, crumbs, and ants everywhere. It wasn’t fit for guests. Dinner was another disappointment. The appetizer was poor quality and didn’t taste fresh, as if it were leftovers that hadn’t been stored properly. And when we booked by phone, nobody said our rooms would be far from the main building. Reaching them meant taking a narrow road with potholes and no lighting, which felt dangerous at night. We paid the bill and tried to explain to the owner how upset we were. Once we understood that this was normal for them, we gave up. We definitely won’t return.