Ristorante Monumento dal 1884 — Restaurant in Rome

Classy and tasty place near the epic Ostia Antica. We had lunch here and the owner or manager provided really good service (seems not every waiter could speak English?). The fried curled octopus turned out to be mini octopus babies, to my surprise. It's like calamari but better, with a very rich balsamic vinegar dressing and crunchy scallions. I had calcio pepe with prawns and lemon. It was good but too cheesy for me. My husband had pasta monumento which was spaghetti with clams mussels squids and octopus. That was really really good! It had some rich seafood flavor (like dried squid?) that wasn't expected, and the herbs and sauce together just elevated the whole dish. The food we ordered paired very well with their house white wine. We wanted to order dessert and asked the manager what they had. He simply brought us to the dessert station and had his pastry chef explaining everything they were serving for the day to us. We had a pie with mixed berries and I have to say it was so good... Especially the crust, reminds of French pastry. They also have a kind of pie with ricotta cheese filling, and cannoli. But we didn't have space for those. overall the price was quite reasonable too! Seems better value than a lot of places you could...

We ordered three dishes. Two of them were wrong. Keep in mind: WE WERE THE FIRST GUESTS, NOBODODY WAS BEVORE US. One of us ordered vegetarian empenadas and told him explicity that its important that its not meat, cause he does not eat meat - at the end he got one with pork but it was too late cause he ate it already (Just imagine what would happen if he was muslim) So we had to give it back and had to wait for the other two dishes again. The other dish was with seafood. 3-4 hours later i felt sick i had to puke.

Edit: Good atmosphere, but as you can see the owner doesnt care if youre a tourist. Telling us we do not know english, but hes the one that brought us not only one but TWO wrong dishes. Do not go there if...

I would've walked right back out of the restaurant, but there aren't many other dining options in the immediate area by the entrance to Ostia Antica excavations. When ordering, the waiter asked us to order the same dish for everyone around the table or we'd be waiting an hour - he made us feel very uncomfortable each time someone in our party decided to order something different. I've never had such an experience at a restaurant, and it was perplexing considering that the place wasn't even packed. Food was very average (you can find much better food and actually order what you want elsewhere in Rome), so no need to put up with this kind of treatment. This place is obviously only as popular as it is because it's a...