Trattoria Papei

The most typical trattoria you can find! Beats all those in the most touristic places, in price and quality. Also very friendly service.

I can’t believe it took me this long to review this restaurant, considering I’ve eaten here multiple times both while I lived in Siena and on each return visit to my adopted «hometown».
Just a couple minute walk from the Piazza del Campo and the main streets, it’s an easy escape from some of the more touristy restaurants. Trattoria Papei offers both indoor and heated outdoor seating, reasonable prices, and a menu with a selection of many typical Tuscan dishes and wines. If in doubt, you absolutely can’t go wrong with the Pici all’Aglione, wild boar or duck, and a nice Chianti.
I recommend Papei and also suggest that after dinner you enjoy the scenic views of the countryside visible from just across the square.

My husband and I came to this place with our tour group, reservation made by our tour guide
situated just outside Il Campo
modest menu with both roasted and grilled meat options for secondi piatti, including wild boar, duck, rabbit, veal, pork, lamb, steak, chicken
siena pricing
We ordered
1. Oven roasted veal 10 €
very thinly sliced veal did poorly to conceal the overly cooked meat, the meat was also heavily salted
2. Pici (thick hand rolled sphagetti with garlic and tomato sauce), 8 €
pasta is slightly overcooked, the garlic and tomato sauce tasted closed to canned
We had
red and white house wines as well as limoncello
(This entry was written by my husband)

Food was pretty good, not that memorable, but the wait staff was very attentive. I did enjoy the minestrone soup, and while they did offer the house wine which you pay for by level of consumption (always a poor choice!!!) it was not bad either. The atmosphere is a bit urgent, but not terrible, particularly for the evening. It is all on one level so my 80 year old mother could manage it. Modestly recommended.

The food at Trattoria Papei is delicious and the prices are reasonable, but the service is hit and miss. Our server was probably the worst we had in the two weeks we spent in Italy – but to be fair, some of the other servers seemed quite friendly and helpful.
Honestly we don’t know what happened – it’s not like we were rude and obnoxious. Both my girlfriend and I speak Italian and try very hard to be polite and easy going. Our server was impatient, he pushed the house wine on us (at first he didn’t want to give us the wine list and then came out with an open bottle of the house, which we grudgingly accepted). The service was slow and we had to wait forever for our check and the change.
In spite of the service we very much enjoyed the food. We started with the prosciutto e melone (which was good – though could have used a bit more melone). We shared a couple of pasta dishes. My girlfriend had the pici, which was prepared perfectly (it’s a thick pasta and needs to be cooked just right – we had it at another restaurant and it was undercooked). I had the penne all’arrabbiata – not a local specialty, but one of my favorites and it was excellent. For our second course my girlfriend had some delicious grilled porcini mushrooms and I had their grilled sausage with white beans. For dessert I recommend the homemade cantucci (almond biscotti cookies that are a Tuscan specialty) and vin santo – a sweet dessert wine (dip your cantucci in it).
The prices were quite reasonable – our entire meal was about 65 euros. I don’t think I would go back though – the service was really quite a turn off. However, people at other tables seemed to have better luck (some of the other servers seemed quite friendly), so my advice to other tourists is that it’s worth taking a chance.