La Montanara - Köln

Wonderful family owned Italian restaurant. Fresh homemade pasta and top notch sea food. I loved the grilled prawns with orange and fennel.

Excelent restaurant with an excelent food,especially fish soup.mmmmmmm... Great service also.Every time we visit Cologne we go there to have new heavenly experience of litle Italy in the heart of Cologne.

We have been to Montanara many times over the years, and we went four times last week, as we stayed at Friesenplatz, and the restaurant is close by. A number of our colleagues also go regularly, I am sure between us all we spend several...thousand euros. The pizzas are good. The dishes are mostly good. There are one or two friendly waiters, and one or two very unfriendly ones, especially the one that looks like Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones. He was not nice at all. On one of the evenings we took some guests with us. We had a good time, we enjoyed good food and a few litres of house wine. On the menu, the starters include calamari with rocket at a price of We all ordered it, asking for the calamari to be fried. It arrived and was as described with rocket, and it was really nice. Main courses were also nice. I paid the bill, and thought it was much higher than expected, but having guests present I didn't want to scrutinise it. I later checked and found they charged for the calamari, and added bottles of wine that we did not order (or receive). It rather feels that they took advantage of me. The next day we asked about the calamari, we could not establish how the calamari is served if it is not usually fried, or why it is more. They were not interested in answering our questions, or in settling our queries. We have carried on eating there, taking the risk on the service. Unfortunately our last night in Cologne we were served by Charlie Watts, and we laughed at the attitude. We like the food at Montanara, but not so much the service (sometimes).

I was looking forward to this place as it was highly recommended by the hotel and I had not eaten all day. Was served by a surly waiter who didn't seem to care less. I selected a ravioli which when it came was so salty...I left half such considering I had not eaten all day was quite a feat on my behalf as I could have eaten a scabby dog at this point. To make up for my hunger I thought I'd order a crème brulee-how very Italian! When it came it was a soup as it had not set. when surly Sam came to collect the plate and asked if it was ok, I didn't get the chance to say anything as he was off to smoke a fat. On reflection, one of THE worst meals I've eaten in Germany. Yukk

Four of us ate at this lovely Italian whilst in Cologne. Staff had good English and were authentic Italian. Food was really lovely, not too busy and staff were friendly. Prices were good. Would def go again.