AMALFI MADRE — Restaurant in Rome

3.5 stars. Normally I would give this place a 3 stars for the value (pricey!) but seeing how it's in the heart of a huge tourist zone filled with terrible, cheaply made, and overpriced food, this restaurant seemed to be a nice change of pace.

Just minutes from the Vatican City entrance, you'll find a huge amount of restaurants with terrible food or flavourless oily food for a few Euros. We were told that Amalfi was a fairly good restaurant that does Neapolitan style pizza in a nice clean atmosphere that wasn't incredibly expensive. They weren't wrong!

The restaurant has huge woodfire stone oven for their pizza and if you're in a rush, they have some premade slices in the entry area. If you're looking to sit down and enjoy a few moments (or a lot of moments in our case), this would be a good option before spending hours in the Vatican. The restaurant has a lot of tables inside and outside if you prefer to enjoy your meal in the Roman sun. It is quite clean and I didnt find the place overloud or crowded. It was nice considering I just spent hours being in line up and crowds at the Coliseum.

My only issue with the place is the service... ordering is slow. Very very slow and it can seem to be very confused. Also, the kitchen seems best to be focused on their pizza and salads. Around us, everyone who ordered pasta either got them significantly later than everyone else at the table or it went missing!

Margherita pizza - The most reasonable priced item on the list and though its close to $20 Canadian ($13 Euros), it was a generous personal pizza that could easily feed 2 people or one super hungry person. It wasn't as nicely charred or spotted like traditional Neapolitan but it had a pretty good taste to it. 3.5/5

Tonno salad - What seems to be a very generous serving is really a large shallow service platter. It could be used as a platter for the entire table but for a person, it's just the right size for one. Still it was filled with very good olives, tuna, grape tomatoes, slices of carrots, and fresh leaves. I enjoyed eating this and would say that their salads are pretty good. Like the pizza, it is nearly $20 Canadian ($13 Euros) and its expensive but seeing how we're within 100 m of the Vatican, it was a good place to eat real food. 3.5/5

Sometimes you can't find a good place to eat when you're in the heart of a tourist zone but Amalfi offers good food with fairly decent but slow service ... yes it's at a price but seeing how there's cardboard being served as pizza for $5 Euros a slice, I feel this is a much...

Our family of 6 ate here tonight. The pizza was good. The prices seemed fair. But then our bill came and the restaurant had tacked on a coperato, or cover charge of 9 euros for the table, which was more expensive than some of our meals. Those are banned in Rome. The place is close to the Vatican. They probably get a lot of tourists and think they can take advantage. We're living here for several months. We've eaten at lots of restaurants. NONE have charged a coperato. When we asked the waiter to remove the charge because it's illegal, he refused. He pointed to tiny print at the bottom of the menu, near the edge of the paper, that said there was a 2 euros service charge per table and a 2 euros charge for each addition or variation to the menu items. None of us made any alterations to our orders. So if the 2 euros table cover charge was legal (and it's not in Rome), the charge should've been only 2 euros, not 9 euros. The owner/manager came out and he refused to remove the charge. No one could explain how they came up with a 9 euros cover charge. We won't eat here again. We don't like going to restaurants that surprise you with extra charges for no explainable reason and then refuse to do the right thing when...

Long wait for server to take our order. There was no issue with her - I assume she was overwhelmed even though the restaurant was less than half full. I could understand how they might be understaffed after observing the man who appeared to be the owner. Our table was missing a glass and other items (this is insignificant to me, but perhaps one small indication of poor management). Pizza was very soupy - just as well that it wasn’t sliced! Except for the outer crust, I had to cut pieces and try to get some cheese and a piece of crust together on my fork. We asked for the check three times. The server told the owner but he continued his conversation at another table (his friends, I guess). Finally he came over and really struggled to separate the items into two checks, which we had asked for earlier, with acknowledgement of such from our poor server. Also, it had a “coperto” (cover charge) - which was not added at other, similar restaurants we went to in Rome (we were not served bread; I’m not sure but the added charge seemed like a purely arbitrary choice by the owner, based on our experience at least). You may have a better experience here, but I strongly recommend choosing a...