Antica Osteria Rugantino — Restaurant in Rome

Anti-smitic restraunt Me and my mother came to eat here on our vacation to rome, we saw from the outside medium-to large dishes and a good smell so we sat down. its quite appearnt that were jewish from the way we dress and we spoke hebrew the entire time, i ordered 2 main courses of pasta as i didn't eat for a whole day and my mother ordered lamb, the courses came and i was kind of in awe of how small my pasta dish was. At first i thought that maybe i miss-judged the size of other people's dishes so i thought to my self oh well i"m gonna eat 2 main courses either way so what does it matter", i ate my meal and my mother ate hers and it was fine, then i asked for my second pasta meal, and let me tell you, when they brought it i was actully shocked it was literally a quarter of the size of the plate and the plate was even smaller than the people sitting next to us, and a woman next to me was given the same dish and it was 3x larger and im not even exaggerating, so i called the waitress and told her :" this is rather small did you give me 2 half dishes since i asked for 2?" she said "No no same dish" and showed me the menu to make sure we were talking about the same dishes so i said :" well this is really really small can i have more?" she said alright and went away for a bit. out came a big guy looking annoyed and the waitress behind him. I didn't really connect why he was there so i said hello and he said hello back and asked whats the problem i showed him the dish and said look at how small it is he was very aggresive with his way of speaking and said that it only costs 8.5 euros and not 15 a dish and what did i expect and scoffed in my face and walked away now before you imagine me as some big 200 kilo 40 year old, im 17 years old and of thin weight so this wasnt a perspective thing the dish really was ridiculously small and i looked over and i could swear that while others got bowl like plates with a lot of food i was given a appetizer-ish size plate and a quarter of that filled only reason that i can think of for them to have treated me so rudely and out right give me less was that me and my mother are jewish and visiting from israel i had a terrible exprience and i hope that if you arent a native italian there you'll consider eating elsewhere and thanks for...

Avoid. This is an easy 1-star fail! Very disappointing. After hundreds of Google reviews that I’ve written, this will stand out as one of the worst culinary experiences. I had the rigatoni with oxtail; it was very salty (salty like the ocean), the pasta was severely undercooked (not just al dente but almost crunchy) and I had to spit out oxtail bone fragments twice. Also, the chicory was soggy wet—worst chicory I’ve had in Europe. Obsequious service didn’t help.

This is the translated reply from the restaurant; not an apology, not a willingness to do better, but just a hurling of insults where they call me “loser”, “invertebrate” and “idiot” because they served bad food: “If this is an easy one-star review, we can certainly tell you that with the same simplicity we rate you as a loser. We couldn't care less about the hundred or more rubbish reviews you wrote, what matters are our over three thousand positive ones, written by people with brains and not invertebrates like you. But tell me something, idiot, did you really think that threatening us with a negative review would scare us and have a negative impact on our reputation? We've been there for a hundred years, you idiot, go home, come back quickly, listen to me. Not to see each other again”

And this is the reply from the restaurant in the original Italian: “Se questa è una recensione ad una stella facile, possiamo sicuramente dirti che con la stessa semplicità ti valutiamo come uno sfigato. Delle tue cento e oltre recensioni spazzatura che hai scritto, non ce ne può fregare di meno, quello che conta sono le nostre oltre tremila positive, scritte da gente con cervello e non invertebrati come te. Ma dimmi una cosa cretino, pensavi veramente che minacciarci di una recensione negativa, ci avrebbe fatto paura e avrebbe impattato negativamente sulla nostra reputazione? Siamo li da cento anni scemo, torna a casa, tornaci pure di corsa, dai retta a me. A...

During our visit in Rome this was the only place my wife and I visited twice. The food was awesome! Not only everything was delicious what we tried, but we could feel that the food here is authentic. First we ordered and a charcuterie board as appetizer, gricia and carbonara as pasta. The second time we tried amatriciana and fetuccini with tomato sauce, then their meatball platter. We were so full both time, we could not even think about dessert.

They have good wines as well. As we are rarely drink wine at home, we were a little bit clueless which type we should choose. The waiter was helpful both times and recommended us some options, from which we managed to find wines that we liked.

Oh yeah, and the waiters. They were super friendly! They speak English very well, so it was easy to communicate with them, they saw when we are ready to order or when we finished the food and they were at our table without asking them for that. And they were not "too much" either. They checked if everything is good and we are satisfied, then they allowed us to enjoy the moment. Our first waiter also recognized us when we went there the second time and even though he was not the one taking our orders, he also appeared from time to time. So overall we felt that they are professionals, but you can talk to them like to your friends. They were open to jokes and you could see an honest smile from them a lot of times. On top of that, when we started talking about how we much liked the wine we tasted first, we got a free small bottle as a gift from them.

To summarize it, our experience with them was perfect two times, the place is cosy, the food is delicious and authentic, while the waiters elevate the experience. I wholeheartedly recommend visiting Antica Osteria Rugantino...