Costa Smeralda or the Emerald Coast as many like to call it, has been a place for the rich and famous for several decades. It is only a 55 kilometres coastline stretch of the Italian island Sardinia, but enough to house some of the world’s elite during high season from July to September. One of the five star hotels in the area is Hotel Cala di Volpe and The Barbecue Restaurant is the hotel’s lunch treat to their concerned guests.

The Barbecue Restaurant is informal and not a typical fine dining restaurant, but the setting is exclusive and the price tag can compete with most exclusive fine dining restaurants in Southern Europe. The restaurant only serves a buffet and it is served in the same room as the hotel’s breakfast and looks and feels pretty much the same except from a change from the typical hotel breakfast to sea food salads, a fairly decent cheese selection and a wide selection of meat and fish that will be grilled and mostly made to perfection after you have chosen what to have.

The service is perfect and the whole team of The Barbecue Restaurant makes everything to keep you satisfied, but Executive Chef Franco Guardone should consider adding an à la carte menu so the guests are not compelled to choose just the buffet.

A bottle of local Sardinian wine, a bottle of water and the buffet for two persons will set you down for about 350 Euros and that is far from what it is worth considered what you actually have. As a matter of fact there are several exclusive fine dining restaurants which hand out lower bills by the end of your meal and especially after a lunch. The Barbecue Restaurant is insanely overpriced just as with everything offered at the Hotel Cala di Volpe. Today’s competition is fierce and people are used to travel around and not just go to their favourite spot in the world year after year.

Even if the clientele of Hotel Cala di Volpe do not have to consider such a worldly matter as money they still do not like to be ripped off. A hotel can be ultra exclusive and be on an ultra exclusive location, but if so the guests will be ultra exclusive as well and they will demand ultra exclusive quality, meals included for certain, and The Barbecue Restaurant’s only ultra exclusive offer is its ultra expensive price tag compared to what you get. Not ultra at all.

Written by Andy