A'Roma l'Osteria — Restaurant in Lecce

This visit was on Saturday at 21:00 place was casualy busy, outside terrace was full but inside tables were empty. We noticed a sign when we entered this really nicely decorated osteria that this is not fast food but place which offers real traditional italian cuisine. Wonderful, that's exactly what we were looking for. We ordered a lot of different meals, for starters some bruschette with mortadela (5/5) and bruschette with anchovies, supli telefono (5/5) and armitriciata, prosciutto with mozzarela buffalo cheese (5/5). We waited for this 1 hour, we sat at 21:00 ordered at 21:15 it arrived at 22:20. Second course were crumbreaded lamb cutlets (5/5), veal with prosciutto (saltimbocca alla romana) (3/5), caccie e peppe (5/5), artichokes (3/5), stuffed ravioles patate fritas which is basically chips. Saltimbocca was thin three layers of veal meat and prosciutto took all the taste. Meat should be thicker. Sauce was amazing. Breaded lamb meat was very tasteful, easy to eat but didn't have taste of lamb. All meals were good, but so it was in other restaurants we vidited so far in our 7 day trip throigh italy (Napoli, Taranto, Ostuni, Matera, Arbelobello...) It's a plus that lady owner came to greeted us and took our order. Waiters and cuisine personel should be working better at some faster pace, we drank first liter ofvery nice dry vino bianco and then waited half an hour for somebody to come so we can order another bottle.

Overall I would rate food here 4/5, but service should be better, slow food eating is one thing but waiting 1 hour for first few meals to arrive at our table and then another 1 hour is just to much. We exit this restaurant around 00:30. So if you have lot of time come and enjoy. Only thing we didn't like was chips, paying 6€ for simple chips is too much. We like local potatoes baked in owen, or deep fried (not classic french fries)) or potato piree which would go fantastic with saltimbocca. But that's our honest opinion. We even saw in some other towns they put potatoes on pizza which we gind gross, so why don't you can get nice juicy potatoes with breaded lamb? That would be fantastic. We spent around 30-35€ per person but we share some of...

I like the fact that Menu is short. it is always a good sign where photos of the food are missing either in menu or in front of the restaurant. Be prepared to wait for your order, things move slowly here-and you could get annoyed if you came with children. Otherwise, I like the slow food approach. Concerning the food, nothing major to complain about, but also nothing to write home about relative to dishes. I can recommend Cacio e pepe, it is above average in quality and taste. Saltimbocca Alla Romana is just OK, but be warned if you wish a side dish - fried potatoes are just chips (crisps in UK), and they certainly do not get along with this dish, which is quite salty because of prosciutto. For people outside of Italy, it is very hard to understand why Secondi always comes without a side dish. If you eat meat, some veggies as a side dish is obligatory. Be aware that you may get "Contorni" (a side dish) before your meat, so usually you have to stress you want it along with your Secondi. To conclude, it would be great if there would be something like mash or oven baked potatoes with Saltimbocca, or some other side dish which would get along with saltiness and gravy. Maybe to widen or change the menu a little bit to better combine Secondi with more comprehensive list of Contorni...Eh, and deep fried lamb chops are also nothing special taste wise, I feel they would be much better if some rosemary is added to the breading, and if they came in some sort of sage sauce and mashed potatoes as a...

Rating of the food: First of all the food was excellent! I had very good pasta carbonara (mezze maniche carbonara). The portion was rather large and the price-performance ratio was also brilliant.

We had with the meal also a wine, which was also excellent.

Rating on everything else: We visited the restaurant on a Tuesday evening in August, thus in high season. First we were there at 20:15 and the owner told us to try again at 21:00. After we got a seat we had to wait a long time, among other things because we did not order an appetizer. The owner had warned us that it would be a long wait, but we didn't know how long it would be in minutes. In the end we waited 1 hour for the food. After eating we wanted to continue and then had to realize that it went again long until we could pay. I left the restaurant at 22:50.

I would like to emphasize that we only consumed one main course and one drink and there were only two of us.

The owner was unfortunately a little stressed and that led to the fact that not everyone was treated equally quickly. The atmosphere was therefore not so pleasant for us.

Important: I assume that this does not always happen and therefore recommend the restaurant anyway, as said the food...