Napoletano's Pantheon — Restaurant in Rome

I have never had a waiter so horrible. We were charged €4 for tap water that the waiter insisted wasn’t. When we pointed this out he just laughed at us and said we just don’t understand. We wanted to pay separately, which I understand might be frustrating, but very much doable and many other places have accommodated. We all totaled up our own amounts for the waiter but he would just shake his head and calculate it himself, which was more than once wrong. This resulted in him charging several of us wrong amounts. After one incorrect charge, he told us that we had done the math wrong when we told him the amount, which is honestly hilarious because he didn’t listen when we told him that amount and insisted on doing it himself. Two minutes of totaling 3 items on his phone calculator and it was €10 off and then he says it was our mistake. He then added that €10 to my bill which confused me, and when a friend explained the situation to me he aggressively asked her what her problem was. Everything lol. And then after this he insisted on a €10 service fee (more than 10% of the total). We tried to contest for the whole variety of reasons, but he stood within a foot of me and wouldn’t move until we gave it to him. He stood directly over me the entire time and repeatedly said we needed to pay it before we leave. It was not printed on the receipt or the menus either. When we asked for clarification as to why this was necessary he just laughed at us and said it’s something restaurants do. For several weeks in Rome this isn’t something that had happened before, and when we said this he repeatedly said “yes it is”. I’m still confused and frustrated with the service fee because from my understanding this is illegal in Lazio? Maybe I’m just wrong about that, but no other place has done this in the past 3 weeks of living in Rome. Point of the story being that this man should never be allowed to work in the service industry (coming from someone who worked in a restaurant for several years). Nothing can be done about the service fee now because there is no evidence of it on a receipt. I honestly never expected interactions like that to happen until meeting this waiter. Oh! An additional note: the food is absolutely not worth the price. One of my friends had grains of sand...

Worst dining experience of my life!

I never thought I would be the one to write a review like this but to help others avoid putting a horrible stain on their otherwise pleasant and wonderful stay in Rome.

Apart for blundering the order and delivering more food than we asked for, both the pizza and pasta were bland and uninteresting, pasta overcooked and mushy. We asked for salt and pepper to add some flavor and had to wait 15 minutes until pepper was provided, while the waiter forgot entirely about providing salt. At that point we had already eaten what we could of the utterly bland food, and the rest cold and disgusting so we simply asked for the check.

Read on, it´s finally getting very interesting! When the waiter showed up, he pressured us to add tips to the credit card change and wouldn´t stop until I told him that if I intended to give tips for the service, I would do that with cash. Irritated he almost threw the credit card receipt at me. At that point any chance of giving tips for the service had gone. As we stood up from the table and started to move away the waiter assaulted us with insults and foul language (in the middle of the outside seating area with customers at every table). As I stood my ground, facing the insults, he tried twice to shove me without much luck, but upon which I asked him calmly whether police assistance would be needed. At that point he stepped away, continuing spewing insults and we were able to walk out of the dining area, thinking that would be the end of it. However, he ended up chasing us over half the piazza, shouting insults and insisting I call the police.

I made the mistake of not looking at the reviews this restaurant has received from previous customers, but was not surprised to see the number of negative reviews from people experiencing similar madness. Hope you read the reviews and avoid such a disastrous...

Terrible experience. We had decided to give this place the benefit of the doubt out of sheer hunger and ignore the reviews here. There is no question that the ambience of eating at night in full view of the pantheon is breathtaking, but that is pretty much it. The food was an insult to anything remotely associated with Italian cuisine. We ordered a pesto pasta and tomato pasta. The pasta was overcooked to oblivion. It was mushy and waterlogged and resembled the texture of baby food the way it fell apart completely. The sauce however was the biggest shock of the night. If you're familiar with the tomato sauce that comes in tetra packs in the supermarket, the one you use at best as a base for something else when you're too lazy to make your own sauce or even too lazy to buy a good pre-made sauce, then you've basically tasted this dish. It had the same metallic manufactured taste to it. It was completely unseasoned or changed in any way. It was just tetra pack sauce dumped on top of mushy noodles.

The pesto pasta was even worse, to the point that we couldn't finish it.

The service was lacklustre as some staff were watching and engaging with some street performers while another was flirting with some American tourists, leaving one server only to handle all the remaining tables, which he evidently couldn't.

They will pressure you to add a tip to your check, and when I initially refused and reiterated that I'd pay what was on the check, the waiter insisted that I'd reconsider and add a tip. You will not get out of not tipping regardless of how bad it was.

The Coca Cola was the best thing served to us that night.

All in all, we paid 33 euros for two pastas, two cokes and then added a 2 euro tip to round it at 35 euros for our worst...