Girarrosto Fiorentino — Restaurant in Rome

I keep ranting about the tourist traps in Rome as they're so, so annoying. Girarrosto Fiorentino is anything but a tourist trap.

It's an old, traditional restaurant that was packed with locals when we walked in. Some waiters are all, well, mature :) Probably they've been there since the restaurant's first day. The reason why I'm mentioning this is that I consider it a positive quality. These are the traditional waiters who deliver outstanding service while treating their guests with the utmost respect.

When I go to restaurants like this - where you just know that the food is going to be excellent - I always ask for an "assaggiata" experience. In Italy, many restaurateurs are actually very accommodating and proud to show off their product...so they will oblige. In a nutshell, an assaggiata is a taste of several dishes for the clients to share. I would say that "sampling" would be a more apt description.

The waiter who served us felt honoured that we entrusted him with our assaggiata. All we wanted was "Roma on a plate". He started us off with a prosciutto and melon, figs and mozzarella balls. The former was quite good while the latter was a tad disappointing. I expected better quality mozzarella from this restaurant. The figs were also a bit bland. One would expect better....

Following this antipasto, he served us a parmiggiana as a "primo". I told him that I'm a big fan of this dish and he made the chef prepare one especially for us. It was amazing. highly recommended.

The "secondo" consisted of a half portion of amatriciana pasta and ravioli cacio e pepe. The first one is definitely not the best I've tasted while the cacio e pepe was quite good.

Finally, we were served a mixture of meats with some fried potatoes and spinach. All the 3 different types of meat were absolutely divine. To be perfectly honest, I forgot the names of the meats; but I will definitely not forget the taste.

But...there's a but. Beware of the bread! Although the bread and the accompanying olive oil are both fantastic, I find it very irritating that servers deliver bread to your table without being asked to do so....and then you realise that you were charged €3 per person for a small basket of bread. I find this cheeky and a bit of a rip-off. In fact, we were charged €6 for 4 slices of bread and 2 small panini. The total bill amounted to around €125 which is on the overpriced side given what we had. This price excludes wine because we didn't have any. We just had 2 bottles of sparkling water to accompany the food.

Had they done way with the €6 they charged us for the bread, I would have been less disappointed at the billing aspect. Would I go again? Probably not even though it was one of the best dining experiences we had in Rome. Yet...from my experience, it seems that you only go to Rome to enjoy the historical beauty as the culinary experience leaves very much...

I got this restaurant by recommendation from Concierge at Aleph Rome hotel while I was on business trip to Rome for the first time with customers. We made reservation late on December 10th through representative at hotel at 7:15.. We got there at the restaurant right around 7:05PM a little earlier than reservation time. But first response from Waiter was quite rude and asked us to wait and provided us table right next entrance. I thought it was quite busy with reservations. While waiters are cutting prosciutto for coming customers, they are setting up tables and cleaned the table with rag.. I do not think it is proper to touch prosciutto with hands touched rags and their face. And one of waiter brought in big chunk of olives as an appetizer and later manager came to prep table right next to us and picked up some olive dropped out of big tray and put it back to big tray which I was not supposed to see that. Anyway we ordered foods, especially, Florentine T bone which were our first taste in Italy.. So three of us ordered steaks and vegetables, but they brought in 3 separate big vegetable tray each of us instead of one which we could share three of us. And we ordered some italian red wine and one of us found dregs on their glass and also bottom of bottle, all of us were quite disturbed with that dregs and made some complaints to waiter then manager came to us and it is normal and he filtered with with sieve and brought back to us. I did not think it was filtered and we did not drink any of half of bottle. We were quite irritated with his comments and gestures, but i was trying to ignore not to create any additional irritation to all of us for rest of travel. And there was another happening when manager cleaned out table for dessert.. we did not have that much of olives, and he took and brought back to prep table and left out there. I did not see whether he was trying to reuse it or throw away. But with previous his actions, I am quite sure he would reuse them...

Regret to say, their food and service was horrible comparing rest of my experience for one week comparing my spending over 329euro on December 10th. Even small restaurants we visited, their service was much heartwarming and good taste of food.

This restaurant was high end, but everything...

This was our last meal in Rome and I wanted to treat my wife to a Florentine steak as we loved it last time we were in Florence. We got the name of this restaurant from our hotel concierge at Boscolo hotels and thought, why not - nice hotel should know where a good authentic Florentine steak is in Rome, yea? Well no, not even close. Sure, we're not in Florence but this meal was just sad.

Let's start with what was good: they take resos and they had no problem we were with my 4.5 month old baby. they sat us in the corner of the restuarant (prob bc we had a baby and if he screams?) and gave us privacy. the feel of the restaurant was old and vintage.

Now what went wrong: we ordered the Florentine steak, thinking there was sides included for 56eur. Florence does. This place didn't and they pursuaded us to get some veggies or potatoes. We gave in finally understanding we'd only be eating meat with no veggies so opted for the "Seasonal Veggies" for 9eur. When the bill came, they charged me 12 eur for some other veggie platter. When I asked what was this, they said sorry and corrected. 6 Eur for bread we didn't order or barely ate. Really?

And what went terribly wrong: the Florentine steak was cold!! How the hell this came out cold is beyond me. the steak was supposed to be medium. The thing was so rare, we couldn't eat a good portion of it. the steak had a ton of fat. Not like the real Florentine steak. Again, we had to cut pieces off. the still bottle water, that they charged 3 eurs for, seemed like it was open already and not full. After pouring 2 small glasses, the bottle was have empty already. the veggies that we ordered were also cold.

My wife thinks this place was a tourist trap and the restaurant thought we wouldn't know any better. I think she's right and these fools thought they tricked us in a low quality piece of meat, likely tap water that wasn't even full, and charged us for whatever else they could. I guess they did at the end since we did end up paying 86 eur for a horrible meal that we walked away scratching our head and still hungry. Oh well, lesson learned, don't come here and don't listen...