Hi everyone! It’s been a while! I was taking a break and focusing on Youtube for alittle bit. I figured I would give you all a quick post since there have been so many visits to my blog lately! Thank you!!! As always, I hope you find my (and Paolo’s occasional) reviews helpful. 🙂 More reviews are coming, we’ve been to Nobu, Hotel Hassler, and some other trattorias since my last review. I can’t wait to catch up with all of you!
Occasion: Saturday night dinner
Initial Impressions: The restaurant was difficult to find with the construction going on (at the time, construction may be gone now because this is a late review). Paolo actually booked this place on the fork because it was late and there were no other open reservations in town. We were trying to go to Trastevere, but no luck. The reservation here was respected and we had decent seats on the main floor of the restaurant. It was a bit cold. If you are sitting on the main floor, there is no big issues with handicap accessibility. I don’t know if they have an elevator, but you would probably have to sit on the main floor and I don’t recommend sitting outside so long as the view remains construction. The menus were not easily found on their website. I dislike this, but since this was on the Michelin guide, I wanted to give Michelin another chance. However, as you already know by now, whoever is eating and judging for the Michelin guide does not know how to eat. I don’t remember whether or not the menu was in English, but you can trust that in the center of Rome, they have English menus.
Once Seated: The main part of the dining room is nice. However it is too white. Being a bit sarcastic at the end of dinner I told Paolo it looks like a mix between a sparse furniture store, an empty art gallery, and a mental hospital. It was pretty cold because we were right in front of the portable air conditioning unit and the door. There was no lamp lamp on our table, but this is ok because it was a light show in there, like daytime. Perhaps they should dim the lights, and I’m surprised to be admitting this for the first time in my reviews. I didn’t look over the wine list.
The Food: To be honest the menu was a bit sparse and I didn’t really fancy anything. Paolo and I skipped the antipasti and went straight to primi, secondo, and doci. We ordered Cacio e Pepe, a simple pasta with tomato sauce, tagliata di manzo to share, and chocolate mouse and mille follie for dessert.
3/5 Cacio e Pepe: Not going to lie the portions here were small. We weren’t that hungry on this day and paolo had just made a fully recovery from being food poisoned for three weeks. It was good but not mind-blowing. He loves cacio e Pepe and never spoke about this one again. I would’ve just given it four stars based on his reaction and experience but this photo with the small portion deserved to have a star docked hahahhaha.
3/5 Pasta con Salsa Pomodoro e Basilico: I don’t know what to tell you guys. It was good, but not mind-blowing. The portion on mine was slightly better than Paolo’s pasta. I would have appreciated some cheese though…they were stingy hahahahaha
2/5 Tagliata di Manzo con Patate: Ok I actively remember this not being good and I usually don’t remember stuff like this that long but seeing the photo puts me back at this place. The meat was covered in this fat or whatever which was probably to hide how terrible the quality of the meat was. It was so tough to eat! There was also alot of fat which would be fine if it was like a ribeye but this was like hard unrendered fat at the ends. Basically 1/5 of thesis slices we got was inedible. The pathos were good but again…PORTIONS.
3/5 Both Desserts: Ironically the dessert portions were fine. I’m lazy to write out both. Paolo’s dessert presentation was absolutely terrible hahahahaha. My dessert presentation wasn’t that great either, but at least it did not look like what you are all thinking when you look at Paolo’s! Both tasted fine. Nothing mind blowing. We should’ve just stopped at secondo, but Paolo really wanted to make me happy and get me dessert because it’s our little tradition.
Service: Service was fine. I was a bit annoyed in hindsight because I sat right under the air con unit and the cold ac kept blowing at me everyone and then. The nice server man took our order within a reasonable time frame and the food came out at decent temperatures and times as well.
Payment: Paolo paid for me that day. It was about 74-80 euros for everything. Not bad pricing, but honestly I feel like at that point we had been eating out at so many places similarly priced that nothing really stood out. Overall a super mid restaurant (as expected with Michelin guide restaurants in Rome) made for tourists. We haven’t been back since.
Nicole in Rome 