Lo Spuntino — Restaurant in Fiumicino

The service was excellent. We were greeted the moment we came into the place and the air of "a warm spot for locals" was established early.

The staff were responsive, very friendly, and were quite happy to go through the menu with us. I imagine this would be a great spot to go for a beer after spending the day visiting sights or the beach.

Food came out at a good pace. However, I'm unsure if they were having an off day, or the foods were just not up to our taste, or a change in staff since we went in the off season, but from our experience, the gnocchi with prawns and mushrooms, the capricciosa pizza and the pasta alla gricia all didn't quite hit the mark. Pasta alla gricia was well cooked but the sauce was thick and congealed, and although I appreciate the Romans like their pastas salty, this one was tough to finish. The capricciosa had very interesting ideas with the pizza being split into 4, but they didn't quite mesh well, the dough was too thick but also the middle of the pizza completely lost its structural integrity and fell apart. The seafood gnocchi was very flavourful and had a lot of umami, but I question the choice to have deshelled and beheaded shrimp tails but then re-introduce the heads into the final product. Whilst I'm sure the extra shrimp adds to the flavour, it also makes it look quite unappealing as well as makes the likelihood you have to keep picking their antennae out of your mouth a more common occurance, and one that makes you think of hairs being in your food. The gnocchi was small and uninteresting, but the mushrooms were the standout of the dish.

Some of these dishes just have ideas I don't agree with, others had issues with the execution I didn't appreciate. I can completely accept that these were conscious choices by the chef, but they left me feeling quite underwhelmed when considering the worst meal we had in our rome trip.

In terms of value for money, it was quite reasonable.

Once again, considering how well recieved this place is from other sources, we're more than happy to entertain the idea this was a one off, but when you have limited time on a trip and a limited number of meals you can have, I don't think we wanted to gamble on Lo...

È stata l'ultima volta che ci ho mangiato: prenotazione impossibile al telefono ed abbiamo dovuto prenotare in loco; dopo l'ordine degli antipasti vengono portati i piattini dove consumare gli antipasti e l'ultimo piattino mi viene consegnato pieno di olio (presumo un piatto da bruschetta) sporco mischiato con quelli puliti( io da cameriere mi sarei scusato e li avrei cambiati tutti mentre la cameriera ha cambiato solo il mio); Chiediamo un cestino di pane che arriva duro e coperto da un velo bianco chiaramente vecchio da due tre giorni; Arriva l'insalata di mare con una guarnizione di insalata verde e radicchio vagamente nerastro anche quella di qualche giorno e comunque un un'ingrediente riempipiatto mai visto in un insalata di mare; Sempre per antipasto, per ben nove euro a piatto arrivano due piatti di 7 metà di alicette marinate messe a stella in un letto di rucola (porzione assolutamente insignificante rispetto al prezzo dei 9€ richiesti); Vengono poi portati i 3 primi ed un secondo di spigola al forno con zucchine e pachino per due persone e vengono portati due piatti per porzionarlo per due. Mentre mi viene consegnato il piatto, dove mangiare il pesce, dal gestore dello Spuntino, lo stesso si accorge guardando il piatto che quest'ultimo risulta sporco e pulendolo con una mano me lo porge dicendomi che erano solo briciole di pane. A questo punto mi son sentito costretto a dirgli di cambiarmi il piatto ed ad informarlo sul resto delle cose riscontrate. Che altro dire... si commenta da solo ma se non ci credete potrete constatarlo di persona. P.s. mi tocca aggiungere per forza una stella altrimenti non posso pubblicare...

Not a tourist destination at all. We were the only tourists, everyone was Italian. We were shown to a table by a male employee, but there was no cutlery or glasses on the table. Lack of professionalism, like, the employee knew damn well our table was empty. Italian people who came in later were helped right away, while we were just sitting there. After waiting for about 15 minutes, we descided to leave.

I would say no service instead of bad service. Maybe good for Italians, but not...