La fontana di Venere — Restaurant in Rome

We stumbled upon this place near our hotel, just a short walk from the Trevi Fountain. Given its location off the main tourist streets, I expected a more customer-focused experience—but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

We ordered a four cheese pizza, limoncello spritz, and a non-alcoholic beer. What arrived was clearly not a four cheese pizza—more like one cheese—and when we politely pointed this out, the waiter insisted it was correct, rather than offering to fix the order. The limoncello was overwhelmingly alcoholic, and they didn’t have any non-alcoholic beer available despite it being on the menu.

To top it off, the pizza took 30–40 minutes to arrive, even though the restaurant was nearly empty. The service felt indifferent at best, and the overall attitude was disappointing.

The only redeeming feature was the air conditioning, which was a welcome relief from the summer heat. But in terms of food and hospitality, there are far better and more welcoming pizza...

I say "hot" because it was really good, but also because every dish was served literally steaming hot and fresh. It is very much worth winding through the tiny streets of Rome to find this hidden gem. For my first course I ordered the Risoto with Scampi. The scampi came whole, in the shell (and I already mentioned piping hot). For my second course I ordered the fillet with mushrooms. Again it was served piping hot and cooked as I ordered it (Medium). My waiter was happy to struggle through English for me and the maitre d came by several times to make sure I was ok - he seemed genuinely concerned that I had a good meal (or they understand how the Internet works). They have wifi with the codes on the back of the table numbers in case your traveling internationally and don't want data roaming and need to google whether or not to eat the whole Scampi or...

My wife and I had the worst restaurant experience of our lives at La Fontana di Venere and I really cannot stress enough how shocked I was considering the rest of these reviews.

She ordered I Viola, a purple gnocchi which resembled Play-Doh in appearance as much as taste. When she told our waiter she did not like the meal, we requested another dish. She then ordered the Cacio e Pepe, a personal favourite of hers. This was also atrocious, not much more to say.

The waiter then argued with my wife about the food and insinuated she was stupid for not understanding what she was ordering. He also charged us for both of her meals, despite her not being able to eat more than two bites of either. I regret not speaking to the manager about our experience and am profoundly disappointed in...