Il Vicolo Nel Corso — Restaurant in Rome

An Insult to Roman Hospitality - Our Worst Dining Experience Ever. The Driest Salmon & The Broken Card Machine "Trick".

I wish I could give zero stars. This was, without exaggeration, the single worst dining experience we have ever had, not just in Rome, but anywhere.

Our evening was a masterclass in unprofessionalism from start to finish. It began with the food. I ordered the salmon, and what arrived was a tragedy on a plate. It was beyond overcooked; it was a dry, flaky, flavorless piece of cardboard that had clearly been abandoned under a heat lamp for far too long.

When I politely brought this to our waiter's attention, his solution was not an apology or an offer to have the kitchen prepare a new one. Instead, he looked me dead in the eye and said, "You can add some olive oil to make it better." Let that sink in. A restaurant in a city known for its incredible food suggested I use a condiment to fix their chef's fundamental failure to cook a simple piece of fish. This is not just incompetence; it's an insult to the customer.

The service matched the food in its awfulness. The staff was inattentive and dismissive. When we finally managed to flag someone down for the bill, we were then told a familiar and tired lie: "The card machine is broken, you'll have to come inside to pay."

We saw them seating new guests at our table the moment we got up. The machine wasn't broken. This was a transparent and rude tactic to rush us out the door. They didn't have the decency to let us finish this evening nicely. They wanted our table, and lying to customers was their chosen method to get it.

Do not waste your time or money here. There are thousands of amazing, authentic, and professional restaurants in Rome that will value your patronage. This is not one of them. They serve disgraceful food and employ manipulative, unprofessional tactics on their guests. Avoid...

Do not recommend, we had a very bad experience, mainly because of the staff.

It was our last day in Italy and we were walking towards a restaurant we had booked, on the way we saw this place which looked very lively and the host at the counter convinced us to come to this restaurant.

I ordered the chicken Alfredo and my wife ordered another pasta dish. When the food came both of us really disliked our food and sent it back right after a bite as we wanted our last meal in Italy to be memorable and before this we had the best experience in all other other Italian spots we tried.

However I did not want to be rude and told the server that we were sorry it was not suiting our palate and we would like to send the food back.

Next thing is see they have charged us the entire bill for the food and other drinks we ordered, I walked up to the server and asked him if they would consider taking one dish off or give us a small discount if possible, that’s when all hell broke loose.

3-4 of them started shouting in Italian and created a hostile environment, saying that it was my problem and not theirs and that my thinking was very bad etc( don’t know why a personal attack was warranted), especially from a tall young server who did not even interact with us during service, they could have just said that they would not be able to refund per policy and I would have paid and moved on, and I did pay the whole bill.

This left a very bad taste, and does not reflect the warm hospitality I received from other Italian restaurants and people we came across.

Do better guys, you can definitely learn to handle...

DO NOT COME HERE. Where do I start? The chicken Alfredo on the menu should have been a dead giveaway, but my husband and I were willing to give the restaurant a chance based on the 4.5 star rating. That ended up being the biggest mistake we made on our honeymoon in Italy, because what followed after was the worst dining experience we’ve ever had.

As we were giving the waiter our order, he continuously tried to push us into ordering more food, after he had already told us what we ordered would be more than enough for the two of us. He didn’t ask how my husband wanted his steak done, and when our food arrived, it was served on a hot plate that immediately left the steak overdone, tough and burnt. I took one bite of my oxtail and it was cold in the middle. When I told the waiter, he gaslighted me by saying that it had been served to me 15 minutes ago, when in fact it had only been one minute.

Throughout our meal, every interaction we had with the staff was extremely negative, and we were left feeling completely dismissed and disheartened. We had the strong sense that we were being treated unfairly, as the group next to us shared an entirely opposite experience in comparison.

In conclusion, the staff here are rude, racist and dismissive towards your concerns, and it is clear that they run their whole business model on exploiting tourists. Trust the multitude of negative reviews on here and eat...