Osteria Da Caran - LA SPEZIA

It's very close to place we are staying at a d was recommended by owner of our AIRB&B apartment. Place is simple, service is ok, food is honest, price are resonable we were outside on a beautiful end of summer full moon night a d was very enjoyable. We can reccomend it!

This restaurant's main plus point is its lovely outdoor seating area we enjoyed nice pizzas and calzones and the prices were reasonable. Sercice wasn't the fastest if not it would have been 5 stars.

Make reservations early or come as soon as this restaurant opens for an experience typical of the food of La Spezia. I would have given 5 stars but for the mosquitoes that bit my ankles while eating. The cashier said they sterilize indoors but not al fresco, which is nice for the air but not so nice for mosquitoes. The food though is simple, well prepared, quickly served by a most considerate wait staff. If you want the traditional Farina al forno, a crust made from chickpea flour and very popular and tasty, reserve your place in advance and ask specifically for however many portions you want. Otherwise, if you come without reservations, this dish may already be spoken for for the entire evening. Yes, it is that good.

I would have given this restaurant a higher rating but we did encounter a couple of problems. We ate here twice on our visit to La Spezia. The first night, my husband and I both ordered Pizza, we ordered from a menu in Italian with English translation underneath, I do not eat meat an had ordered a pizza which I believed to be an essentially vegetarian pizza, unfortunately when my pizza arrived it had sausage meat on it. I checked the menu and realised they hadn’t included the sausage in the English translation. I am not that precious about being vegetarian and was happy to just remove the sausage meat and eat the pizza. We explained what had happened to the staff and they understood and were going to change the menu, that was just unfortunate. We returned the second night, this time I ordered the local pasta to Liguria with pesto, my husband ordered pizza again. My pasta arrived, we waited a few minutes for my husbands pizza but he told me to start. I ate a slowly as I could but his pizza still didn’t arrive, eventually I asked when it would be coming and it arrived a short while later, I had finished my pasta by then and my husband ate alone, it’s not a huge problem and the food it good but just a bit annoying when you are a couple and we had to eat separately. Also I wanted tiramisu for dessert but by time I asked they had run out.

The restaurant was suggested to us by our host. The pizzas were very bland compared to other places we have been to. And we both had the feeling that the pizzas we ordered was not at all what we expected (eg ingredients that were not supposed to be there and missing ingredients) and there was really too much cheese for our liking. Perhaps the only positive thing is that the service was really quick.