La Carbonara — Restaurant in Rome

We were recommended to try this restaurant specifically by a local so we were very excited to try their carbonara. As others have mentioned, the service leaves much to be desired. We were accustomed to the more transactional type of service that you experience in Italy; this was not that. The service was both aggressive and dismissive. We ordered bread which said on the menu it should come with olive oil, and also requested balsamic vinegar; the bread came dry and they charged us for qty 2 (I’m assuming because we were 2 people? We only wanted 1 serving). I believe our server forgot about these things because she was so aggressively pushing us to order more than what we really wanted which was just the carbonara.

We were a little taken aback by how aggressively she was trying to get us to order more so we ordered the caprese just to end the interaction. The caprese salad did taste very nice.

The carbonara was good but quite salty and I would say the pasta was a bit firmer than al dente. But, we enjoyed it.

The thing that really put a sour note on the dinner was at the end, we got the check and they had a slip of paper asking us to write down how much we wanted to tip. I had experienced, and been told by many locals, that tipping is NOT expected in Italy. So we chose not to write anything because our bill was way higher than we were hoping to pay (€85 for two people to have 1 drink each, pasta, and a caprese salad???) and we were not particularly impressed by the service to merit additional tip.

The server came to run our card and pulled out the sheet of paper and ASKED US TO WRITE SOMETHING DOWN ON IT. I was honestly stunned. I am certain that piece of paper wouldn’t have even been in there if we were obviously European. In America I am a generous tipper but it was obvious this restaurant had inflated prices in a touristy location hoping to attract the ignorance of tourists with these practices.

I am confident we could have found similar/better quality carbonara for a much lower price point elsewhere in the city and was disappointed in this...

If you're reading this, please please PLEASE trust me. Do NOT choose this resturant. Literally there's like 7 other resturants in the same square that are a lot more friendly and promising in food.

I ordered two appetizers, which were average at best. The green vinegar sauce for the fried zucchini was decent, but nothing memorable.

But hey, the restaurant's name is LA CARBONARA. The main reason why I'm there is for the carbonara as a carbonara lover myself.

That sh*t is the most disgusting carbonara I've ever eaten. For one thing, the pasta was very hard and chewy. Texture is absolute garbage. And the flavor? I couldn't taste anything except literal salt. That was the saltiest thing I've had in my life (no, LITERALLY. I was born and come from America. I KNOW whats considered salty. Even then this is the saltiest thing I've had in my life) and since in Italy they don't serve you free glasses of water, you can only drink wine or sparkling water by paying for it. I came out of that restaurant with my tongue stinging and throat dehydrated. Seems like they boiled the pasta with literal salt which would explain why it was so damn chewy and salty.

On top of that the servers are so so so hostile. Me and my family are genetically Asian and according to other reviews, they treat people differently based on race but hey, even if you're white or Italian why would you bother paying for food and services made and served by racists?

The ambience was nice though. But even then, you have to reserve and pay extra to even dine INDOORS. I don't come from Italy so I won't comment on their possible culture about all that but the look they gave us when we were one of the customers going indoors were NOT nice.

So yeah thats my experience of dropping around 200$ for uncooked pasta caked with salt made by supposedly racist people. I can only pray that people reading this review listen to me and find somewhere to eat.

If you're gonna eat here even after reading all this, bring at least a gallon of water so you're not dying by the time you leave this...

I never write reviews but felt I had to on this occasion! Would not recommend. Although the carbonara which I ordered wasn't bad at all, it was very small, especially for the price (€12 if I remember correctly). The chocolate mousse which both me and my partner ordered was absolutely tiny and for some reason had lots of water in the bottom and cost €7. I could forgive this though, as I know it is a good location and in a central piazza so we were both expecting to spend a lot and were prepared for this. The real issue for me was the service; the waiter who served us was very rude. After he had realised we weren't being too extravagant (we had a primi and a dessert each and shared a bottle of wine which was about third down the list) he totally changed his mood and turned his attention to people on other tables who were spending more money on multiple courses. When we asked for a dessert and coffee menu he slammed them down in front of us and when we asked for a minute to consider what we wanted he asked us to hurry because of the time. After this we saw him ask another group if they wanted to order secondi courses. When we got the bill he charged us for bread and water which we hadn't ordered or even had on our table and when we told him there had been a mistake he told us that they were all part of coperto, even though coperto was also added seperately. I was really disappointed with La Carbonara: the night was an anniversary celebration for me and my boyfriend and we wanted to push the boat out a little bit as we were travelling on a budget the rest of the holiday. Like I said, I don't tend to do reviews, and many of the other places I have eaten in Rome and Italy have been lovely! I would recommend trying somewhere not in central piazzas as they are often much cheaper/ bigger/...