Fattoria Degli Usignoli

If you are looking for a place where the cuisine makes you say "Mamma mia, how delicious!" but the service makes you whisper "I want to go extinct," the Fattoria degli Usignoli is the perfect movie set for you. Let's start with the prelude: 20 minutes of waiting to be seated. Such a long amount of time that my companion started making friends with the ants on the floor and I reconsidered my life choices. Country calm is fine, but here I would say it's really too much. Once seated, however, the plot twist: the food arrived immediately and was also delicious. A real tragedy, because we would have liked to complain more vigorously, and instead we found ourselves chewing in silence with our mouths full and our morale torn between culinary appreciation and mystical rage. But the true apotheosis of discomfort arrived with the dessert: the mille-feuille. A block of granite disguised as a dessert, hard to die, served obviously without the aid of a knife. The result? A civil engineering operation attempted with only a fork that literally made half the portion fly and crash directly onto the floor. A spontaneous tribute to the gods of gravity, performed under the strictly indifferent gaze of the staff. By the way: after we finished eating, the dirty plates remained there, motionless, for a good 15 min with the waiters passing by without noticing us. The waitresses? Mythological figures endowed with a friendliness and a desire to work strictly equal to zero. Mortal sin: the initial food was really good. But between the welcome like an INPS waiting room and the lack of customer attention, unfortunately it only deserves 3 stars; they could have made the place top-notch.

We were at the farm for a wedding. Everything truly beautiful and taken care of down to the smallest detail. Being celiac I had a lot of availability regarding the dishes

Not the Tuscan retreat you’ve been promised! How can this ever be called a 4 star property? We arrived to a very unfriendly welcome - shown to our rooms with no offer of help with our luggage by very miserable looking staff, and upon entering the rooms discovered they had not been serviced after the previous guests. No apology offered, just ‘a mistake on the schedule’, and even though they were then cleaned it left a sour taste. The rooms are dark, dingy and haven’t been touched for about 50 years (or so it seems), the toilet flusher fell off, the towel rail broke, and the rooms flooded when there was a rainstorm. Additionally, we received no daily room cleaning and when we asked were told it was due to us being in the apartments, but this is not what we expect from a 4* property. This property is in the middle of nowhere and the surroundings are beautiful, which is the only saving grace, but between breakfast, lunch and dinner hours, the cafe and restaurant are closed - so no opportunity to grab a coffee or even bottle of water throughout the day. Breakfast was rubbish and you had to pay extra for a coffee, and lunch was fine if you liked cycling the same 3 options every day. Added to which I was rudely told I could not continue sitting on the seating outside the lunch area, and the cushions for the seats were taken away - ‘we’re closed’, I was told, and the door locked in my face. Pool areas are tired with broken loungers with one height setting. We honestly couldn’t wait to leave - there’s no way in the world this has 4 stars. Save your money to spend elsewhere, it’s not the idyllic Tuscan retreat you’re being sold. Pizza night at the restaurant was great, but isn’t offered every day and the rest of the food is average at best - this is our 1 star.