La Scaletta — Restaurant in Rome

This place is a scam! AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

If I could give it 0 stars, I would. We were in Rome for a couple days and we were very hungry and tired after a long day of sightseeing. All the restaurants we went to had long queues, so we stumbled upon this one. We all each got a pizza to ourselves, and it was the worst pizza I've had in my life. I've had frozen pizza better than this garbage. The dough was paper thin and cracker-like, the cheese tasted off. The flavour of the sauce was non-existent.

The next morning, we all got diarrhea (I assume from the bad cheese).

When we went to pay our bill, it was 60 euros and we paid in cash and counted it multiple times to make sure it was the right amount. After a few minutes, we got up to leave and the host flagged us down to say we give him the wrong amount and that we were 20 euros short.

I explained to him that we definitely gave the correct amount, but he started getting hostile immediately. I suspect this is a common scam they pull on tourists and most of them don't know any better and just pay the extra money. I asked him how do I know you didn't just pocket the 20, you were in the back away from our view for a while. He said he's gonna call the police and his boss. I said go do it, because I gave you the correct amount.

A few minutes later, his boss shows up and he's also immediately hostile, as if we're some criminals. He asks me if I paid, I said I paid the correct amount, and he just shoves the 40 euros in my chest and tells us to leave. I said no I wanna pay for my food, I'm not trying to scam you guys, and he pushes us out of the restaurant.

There were guests who were all seeing this and we were embarrassed at how they were treating us, like some petty thieves.

We walked away through some narrow streets and we saw the boss looking at us with a nasty expression, and we suspected he was following us. We were very scared and did not know what he was up to or what he was trying to do, so we quickly turned around and tried to get away from him, and get to our Airbnb as soon as possible.

This was the absolute worst part of our Rome trip and honestly ruined the trip for us, we just wanted to go home at that point. To be treated like this when we are paying customers is absolutely unacceptable and despicable.

DO NOT GO...

Didn't order food, only drinks, so offering 3 stars as everyone else's food looked great. Ordered a mojito that tastes like primary school English water ham, no idea why, and found the atmosphere ok.

When going inside to use the bathroom, the head waiter made a joke in Italian (sure - only I don't really speak Italian. Speculation hereon.) And the other servers laughed. (Cool!) After using the bathroom there's a tap with no handles. As in, theres no water from the tap. No handles. No foot pump, no no-touch feature. No water. I leave with hands I cleaned with my own sanitizer, but I dread to think about the other customers and workers that handle food without clean hands.

Maybe the head waiter made a joke about no water? At my expense - I don't mind jokes, but dirty hands in a food restaurant just isn't hygienic. It made me feel weird.

I ask for the bill from my table, the head waiter says yes but we wait over five minutes. I go up to ask again at the door, and the head waiter says one minute. I don't mind waiting, as he seemed to be without other servers, but he was truly doing nothing else and could've taken the payment. The server comes in, a young woman. He speaks to her harshly and tells her (I figure) to take payment for my drinks and service charge in a tone I considered harsh. Why did he need her to do it? Shouldn't a head waiter be able to use a card machine? The server was kind and quick, and wished us a good night.

Overall, from this, the service was weird. I didn't like the head servers treatment of the server girl and I didn't like the general lack of bathroom tap water - and nonchalance about this - at a food place. I was glad I didn't get food from...

A little gem in Trastevere, Il cibo è eccellente. Stayed in Rome for 8 nights and came here on 5 occasions which is unusual for us to go to the same restaurant more than twice on a holiday. Why the repeat visits? Because initially they were the only one that we didn't have to queue outside, but on tasting the food decided to come again and again and again. Can highly recommend the carbonara (egg based sauce unlike UK where cream is the base and to sickly for me). The special pasta with a light cream with bacon and peas in the sauce, yummy. Particularly nice were the secondi dishes the steak dish and the slow cooked oxtail served with roast potatoes. Starters were also tasty and puddings a nice finish with favourites being the Tiramisu and panna cotta. They had a separate waiter for drinks and food and both were prompt and courteous. Best of all a litre of house red wine was 7 euros and tasted good. So in summary you can queue up in some of the other more highly rated restaurants for food that doesn't taste any better and pay 25% more. Or choose this restaurant with a genuinely friendly atmosphere, very tasty food and at a very reasonable...