Da Mario al Pigneto — Restaurant in Rome

We sat tonight to avoid the rain and order some drinks and food. As non-Italian speakers we were offered a menu, which included their regular drinks and food items. As people kept coming we noticed that they are offered a buffet option that’s 10 euro for a drink and “unlimited” assorted dishes of the day. I found it quite weird that we werent made aware of it but i asked the waitresses and they seemed quite annoyed. Turned out that we could order it but pay an extra 2€ as our cocktails were outside the drinks offered in the deal. As the dishes kept coming ( nothing special, quite school cafeteria style and bland cold food, however wont talk too much as i expected it, having in mind the price), the waitresses would politely ask each table what would they like to continue with. Our dishes were never collected and we had to ask each time what we could have as our next course. The whole restaurant seems to operate quite chaotic as girls dont have sections and you never know which one to ask. I also had to go inside to pay with a card and wait for 10 minutes until they figure out which one was my table. Hate to give such a bad review as it seemed quite busy and maybe I’m not too familiar with the culture, therefore wasnt impressed by the food but service wasn’t...

I'm Italian and I'm very fed up about "tourists traps". And even more fed about seeing not Italian people managing places without being merged with the real Italian culture, atmosphere and sentiment. Our tourists must experience Italy and Italians. That's not discrimination my dear haters but just protecting our well known "Made in Italy".

I sat with my sister, brother in law and nephew. We ordered two aperitivo (drink + cold cuts each), one for me and one for my sister, a fruit juice for my nephew and another drink for my brother in law.

The not Italian lady said: " for those with the drink only, if they might taste some of your cold cuts they have to pay a full price as aperitivo.

I asked to repeat, maybe I was semi deaf not to have understood very well so she said the same stating: "that's the rule!"

First of all, are you really there to look and check this? And who is this xxxxxx person to have set such policy?

We obviously stood up and left! These places deserve to be empty and shut down. I apologize to our lovely tourists and my Italian people.

I...

So many things went wrong last night. First, our drinks arrived and the picture that shows mine is a "Pina Colada". This is not a Pina Colada... I don't know what that was but it was mostly juice, for sure. I know it's a smaller aperitivo but only being allowed to take once plate is ridiculous. They serve pastries as well, meaning I had to clean off my plate with napkins because it was covered in sauces. Maybe they should provide smaller plates for the sweet stuff. Really struggled to identify most of the food in the containers because they had no labels. Personally, I hate seafood but I managed to scoop a huge amount of good looking pasta onto my plate, only to find out it had the tiniest pieces of fish mixed in. Please label your dishes! The one thing I almost enjoyed was the bruschetta, which was stale. The pizza slices were bland and stale. And the massive donut I had at the end was ALSO stale! Couldn't finish most of the dishes I put on my plate. The one good thing was the service but that just wasn't enough to make this a...