Osteria dei Pontefici — Restaurant in Rome

Tl;dr - food was not great and service was awful. I mean, our waiter made us so mad with his unfriendliness that we left hungry and didn't order more food because we no longer wanted to be there with those bad vibes. This review is pretty detailed btw.

Waiter was rude right off the bat when my uncle stepped into the restaurant. He stepped in, not knowing that we should have told the waiter outside that we were hoping to eat there. (Literally he stepped in and then got attitude). And then continued to be rude throughout the meal, giving us attitude at any opportunity. Also, we clearly we are tourists as we only spoke English to him. Therefore, we asked some clarifying questions and he was clearly not happy to answer. But here's the funny thing, he was visibly friendly to every other table surrounding us. We felt very ostracized.

Next are the examples of how our night continued to grow sour. 1) he seated our party outside and basically slapped our menus on the table. Sure maybe he was in a rush, but he seemed to take his time and gently provide menus and conversation with other tables. 2) we ordered squid pasta in which he immediately replied "no." We were confused, so we asked for clarification, where he replied with "finished" and just kept repeating it. It took us a second for us to register that he probably was indicating that they were out of that item for the night. Again, maybe he was not great at speaking English? But doesn't explain why he spoke to other tables just fine and we even heard him explaining his personal recommendations to other tables. 3) with the squid pasta unavailable, we had to take a second to recalibrate and order a replacement. He definitely showed his impatience with a sigh and rolled his eyes. I'm serious!!! We took maybe 5 seconds to pick another dish, too. 4) we ordered three plates and asked if we could start there and order more later. He said nothing back and took all of our menus from us. By this point we were sooo over it 5) he then brought out our food without speaking to us, then handed the table behind us the same appetizer and told them "this is on the house!" and smiled. For the rest of the meal, he never came to check up on us, which would have been fine if that were the standard for this establishment. But clearly it wasn't, as we noticed that he stopped by every other table, checking if they wanted more wine, and seeing how their food was.

Food wasn't even good honestly, or maybe his attitude made it taste worse. We ordered pizza, pasta, and bruschetta. The bruschetta was fine, but the pasta and pizza were pretty below average. Didn't come close to making up for a pretty awful night.

I've been racking brain trying to figure out why he hated us do much LOL. What it comes down to is that we really didn't deserve that...

I recently visited this restaurant for lunch while in Rome because it was close to my Airbnb and looked inviting. The experience quickly soured. Our waiter started by asking if we’d like some appetizers, listing off a few options. I specifically ordered the bruschetta, but just two minutes later, he returned with every appetizer on the menu, filling our table with food I hadn’t ordered. He then quickly walked away.

When I called him back to explain that I hadn’t ordered all these dishes and couldn’t eat them, he suddenly seemed to no longer understand English. We spent several minutes trying to clarify the misunderstanding, but he acted confused and aggressive, continually pushing more unwanted food on us. After I firmly stated that I wouldn’t pay for or eat the dishes I didn’t order, his attitude shifted to passive-aggressive.

A few minutes later, an older American couple sat next to us and experienced the same issue—they were brought dishes they didn’t order. When they tried to address it with the waiter, he simply turned his back on them and helped another customer. It seemed like a clear tactic to push overpriced food on tourists, with no mention of prices upfront.

To top it off, when I received the bill, I saw that they charged a 10 euro “service fee” per person, something I hadn’t encountered in any other restaurant in Rome. They also charged me for two orders of bruschetta, even though I had only ordered one. I was later told that I had been brought two orders, which I found misleading. Overall, the experience felt predatory, with the waitstaff taking advantage of tourists. The food was average at best by Rome’s standards, but the service left a bad taste...

My husband and I were celebrating our 10 year anniversary in Italy for the first time ever and this is the very first restaurant we went to. The older gentleman who waited on us, was not very attentive at all, and not very warm or greeting. When we finally got our food, my husband had ordered the clam Pasta dish and it looked very promising because they were at least seven clam shells in the dish but after digging all the clam shells out, they were only two clams in the whole dish!. My husband went ahead and ate it anyways and could not get halfway through it because there were so many clam shells broken up in the dish. When we called one of the guys over to tell him about it, he laughed and said the cooks probably ate the other clams. Then we asked our server who hadn’t even checked on us since he dropped our plates off, over 20 minutes, and all he did was shrug his shoulders, and say he didn’t know where they went. They did not discount the meal, or take it off of our bill. The absolute worst service, and food we’ve had in a very long time!

The two blessed places we went to eat in Rome are, Da Enzo and buona forchetta hosteria pizzeria(not just pizzas, but better food and service than this place), which are not...