Ristorante Licchio's - Taormina, Italy: Located in the east coast of Sicily, Taormina is a small town known for its beaches and in its past, a haven for expatriate artists and writers. The town also is host to numerous summer pop and cultural concerts.

Ristorante Licchio's is a trendy restaurant and wine bar that caters to the hip and chic. From foreign pleasure seekers to au courant locals who wish to dine en vogue, the restaurant plays host to a variety of diners who want a taste of Sicilian dishes in an elegant atmosphere.

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We arrived at around 8:30, and to our surprise, the restaurant was still empty. As we were guided to our table, I noted how splendid the restaurant looked from the inside, save for an out of place plastic sheet that smothered an area of the open-air portion of the roof. Functional, but obviously very shabby! At around 9:00, however, people started coming in and in a few minutes the place was bursting; a positive sign which meant that the food and equivalent service would be excellent.

To set our palates on the right course, we ordered some antipasti that certainly looked splendid! We chose three appetizers, namely the stuffed zucchini flowers with ricotta cheese, an omelet with tiny, little fish, and baby squid with green beans and mandarin orange. I'm lumping all of them together in one sentence mainly because they all had one thing in common: they were all horrible!

The zucchini were deep-fried, yet they were tasteless. The fish omelet and baby squid had an odd, slimy and fishy flavor to them, not in a way that a pleasant fish dish engages the senses. I could almost imagine how their itty-bitty scales would taste like as I tried my best to swallow what I could. It was quite an achievement just getting through the starters!

After our disappointing appetizers, we were hoping that our main course would turn out to be more favorable. We had a Spaghetti Bolognese with Squid that looked sumptuous, but when we had a few bites, we were left with that awful fishy taste in our mouths again. We decided that this was unacceptable and simply left the dish.

Our server noticed that we weren't enjoying our meal and asked us if everything was in order. When we mentioned that we didn't like it at all, he simply commented that that's the way their dishes are really made. No refund, no exchange, nothing.

You would think that since this was not only a restaurant but also a wine bar, they would have excellent wine, but they didn't. It was a very narrow sighted selection that did not do wine justice. This was the last straw, and we decided to cut our losses and leave.

Ristorante Licchio's receives a Not Bombastic rating for the poor food, limited wine selection and that piece of plastic hanging on the roof.

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