Arena di Verona - Castelo Branco

I often visit Castelo Branco for work and every time this is a must visit restaurant. They have excellent pizza and every type of topping you could want (and even some that you may not have known you wanted). In addition to pizza they have salads and pasta dishes as well as desserts. I find the service to be attentive and fast. The food is always excellent and the pizza is baked in a traditional style with a crispy and chewy crust.

We arrived a little bit late, with no reservation, the restaurant was full, but they manage to arrange a table for two. The time to place the order was quick, the starters and main course arrived in reasonable time, given that the restaurant was full. The food tasted very good, both the pizza and the pasta were made with good ingredients. On the down side only two comments: In the end we ordered a Limoncello, but it was not served cold as it normally should. To many tupperware always visible in the workbench of the pizzaiolo and in the vertical fridge next to the dinning area, don't contribute to a nice and clean image that one would expect in a restaurant. The overall experience was very good and we recommend the restaurant for any one that want's to eat good Italian food in Castelo Branco.

I love their pizzas, but 50% of the time I go there, which start to be less and less times, I have to wait a lot to be attended. As an example of bad crew, I already walked 2 times out because we waited more then 20 minutes just to place an order, and restaurant wasn't even full. Another day, a girl put my food in the other side of the table waiting the I get up instead of putting in front of me. Last time, I order pasta, it was similar to bolognese and taste exactly like the ones we bought frozen, it wasn't salted at all and it was less then half a plate (according to the other customers that ordered pasta which means they don't measure qtys so, if you want to order there? order only pizzas and only when it's not weekends, holidays or nights before that, else even if you come early you might be more annoyed like a lot of confusion, bad customer service mixed up with good pizzas, but also the possibility of mixing up orders or forget your order and deliver cold pizza (which didn't happen to me, but another customer in front, and the waiter only said he was sorry, didn't gave them a new one!?!??!

I had a bad experience in this restaurant, first smelled like smoke from the wood fired oven, and our clothes start to smell like that too. The menu is really big and you get confused to a lot of different combinations. Some of them don't make any sense. I choose one with codefish. And it was terrible very salty. A experience not to repeat

Service was shockingly slow, we waited 50 minutes for Bruschetta . Bruschetta is not just tomato on cold soggy toast ! Lasange and Carbonara eventually followed. I know that's what it was because the menu said so. Both were served stone cold having sat on the serving hatch for 10 minutes before the demented waiter took it to our table. Neither dish tasted remotely like it should have, unseasoned and lacking flavour. If you're looking for an authentic Italian meal this is not it.