L'Archetto — Restaurant in Rome

We asked for a table of 2 and the waiter pointed to a table at the corner of the shop. No one gave us the menus for about 10min. Next to us was a table of about 8 people, and one of the waiters, who seemed to be either the manager or someone in this business, was continuously joking with them, yet ignoring us completely.

The food was not bad, but not good compared to every other restaurant in Rome. In the meantime, the service was just enough to do the job.

When we asked for the bill, this manager/waiter got it for us. We asked to pay by card, and his response was, "No. Leave and don't come again", and he left. At first, I smiled as I assumed he was joking, but then after 5min he never returned and completely ignored us. So we asked a 2nd and 3rd waiter and both said that their card machine is not working and has been out of order for the last month. They told us that there was a tourist withdrawal machine a few doors up. (which i didn't use as these machines are very shady).

Once I came back with the cash, my gf realized that we were charged 15% service charge instead of 10% as stated on the menu. At first he took the money from my hand, said thank you and left. Thankfully I had less money in my hand than the total on the bill. So he came back and requested the rest. We confronted him and told him that it was 15%, not 10%. His first reaction was, "Ah yes because you are tourists, not Italians!" To which I replied, "That's illegal." Which seems to have surprised him that I knew my rights. So he looked at the bill again and said, "oh because this is an old menu and the prices changed." ..... I burst laughing. He accepted the money he had and told us to leave.

After all of this, we looked at the reviews and found that this "1 month out of order card machine" excuse has been used for at least 3 years.

What a pity, such a central restaurant, which could have a lot of potential, trying to screw its customers. Probably accepting only cash to avoid paying taxes, and also trying to steal 5% extra...

We picked this place as there are two l’Archetto’s listed on Apple Maps that in reality are one restaurant. One of them has pretty good reviews, hence we gave this place a try.

The staff were friendly, at least initially. We arrived and were given a lovely table outside. We ordered our food but were told the house red was ‘finished’ - odd we thought, but we treated ourselves to a 24€ bottle. The waiter then comes out with this “lovely bottle of wine…” - the other one they’d run out of, but this one was 30€. I mean, he was upselling, but doing so by making it seem like there was no other option. He also made quite the song and dance about the wine, sniffing the cork etc - it was all too much.

We were well attended, but as others have said, when we came to pay we were told it was cash ONLY - this was not advertised. I held my ground as we didn’t have a card on us, only phones with which to pay. Eventually we were allowed to pay by card inside. From reading the reviews they are clearly making people go to an ATM, but they do actually have a card machine!

The food was nice, but I left feeling like they’d tried to extract every penny they could from us, using some pretty questionable practices at times. I think there are nicer places to...

note added to the end I have two well behaved kids and they sat us in the back room by the bathrooms. We thought it would be fine but the hand dryer sounds like a rocket taking off and one kid is severely scared of loud noises so every time it went off he lost it and we had to walk out and take a break. This happened three times before the food came out. I asked if we could move to a front table (there were 5open tables plus the tables outside) and one server said yes. I moved and my husband brought the food to us from the back table. I was stressed with two kids on my lap (under 2) at a two person table - trying not to take up any room (with permission to be there). And the other owner(with glasses) and server told us we had to move back to our table or leave. I wasn’t going to traumatize my kid anymore so I told them we were leaving and they needed to pack up our food- which they did. Then they proceeded to make my husband pay in cash to avoid taxes in Italy (it’s a whole scam they are running and their card reader does work and they pretend like it doesn’t) and they kept £120 when it cost 90.

management has since reached out and has offered compensation for the experience and the meal- we may revisit and hopefully have a...