Roma Sparita — Restaurant in Rome

I will never forget about this night, one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had. Recommended from our chef in heaven anthony bourdain 🙏🏾 first time in rome I had to try the highly sought out cacio e pepe! But before I got there, I had to reserve my table on their website which I did the morning of by sending a message, they were able to respond to me after about an hour. It is only by reservations so don’t bother just showing up hoping to get inside. I came hungry since this was my last night in rome and I wanted it to be special, so once I was seated I started with the bread and a glass of the house red. After glancing thru the menu, I’ve had my picks of each meal ready. First came the fried stuffed olives, absolutely to die for if your olive fan. It wasn’t oily like I had in other places, just crispy and the meat stuffed was savory and salted by the olive. Next was the main attraction, the cacio e pepe. If your cheese lover like I am, this dish is one of a kind. Sitting on a bed of a crusted pecorino Romano, the pasta was perfectly al dente and the sauce was simply olive oil, a healthy portion of pecorino Romano and black pepper. After that, I had the veal scallopini with lemon, cooked with a lemon and olive oil sauce which was a fatty sauce, a thick consistency but very much enjoyable. The lemon really made this dish stand out. Lastly for dessert, the server (I’ll get into the service later) recommended a dessert not on the menu which was chocolate cookies with ricotta and lemon. That dessert was something else, the mix between the cookies, light ricotta and the hints of lemon blended perfectly, it resembled a lot like a chocolate and lemon cheesecake, so good! The atmosphere was just beautiful, I absolutely loved the home aesthetic inside, really got a sense of being in a true Italian household inside. The server I had was pretty much the main server inside and this man was the hardest working person I’ve met in Italy. So well mannered, I respect his work ethic so much I left the biggest tip I did during my trip. During my dinner, he caught me watching a video of anthony bourdain and mentioned that he was the one who served the chef himself! He showed me the video of the episode of No Reservations and there he was, explaining the cacio e Pepe dish to our beloved chef. He was a very nice man and to be my last dinner in rome which he didn’t know about, ended my trip on such a high! I ended the night with an espresso and walked very satisfied around rome, enjoying its beauty before making my way to the airport....

I normally don’t leave reviews but this was without a doubt the single worst meal of our trip and I would hate for someone else to waste a precious meal of their holiday on this restaurant. Tldr; don’t fall for the reviews and Bourdain effect—this is the biggest tourist trap with unbelievably rude staff, and you will regret wasting a dinner here.

Food: I’ll start by noting that everything we ordered was a direct, although inexplicably reluctant, recommendation by our waiter. The fried zucchini blossoms were a tasteless, bready blob with a few flowers inside. We couldn’t bring ourselves to finish it. The famous cacio e pepe was fine but pretty dry and uneventful. The oriechette special with salted cod was maybe the worst pasta I have ever had. The sauce dried up on the hard pasta and the cod was extremely bland. We actually cancelled our secondi because the food was so bad, which I have never had to do before.

Drink: We ordered two beers and a water, all of which came out lukewarm. We didn’t complain about it because we didn’t want to bother the servers who seemed busy and were already being cold to us, but couldn’t have done so anyways given it was impossible to flag anybody down all evening.

Service: So cold and impatient to our table from the very beginning when we asked for recommendations with our order. Also took away our plates with more than half of the food left unfinished and didn’t bother to ask if everything was okay.

To add insult to injury, our waiter (after three separate requests for the check) dropped off our bill and said “service is not included.” Which was insane because (1) restaurants in Rome typically do not apply service charges, (2) literally what service and (3) the bill had a 3 euro charge for “pane e service” ?? When asked about this the waiter just said that it was a fee for bringing out plates and cups to our table and said all restaurants do this— we’ve literally never seen this charge on any of our meals in Rome. When asked why we received no bread when the charge says “pane” he said it was our fault for not requesting bread.

Rome is an amazing city with more incredible restaurants than any of us have time for in a single visit. There is no reason to spend any of your hard earned time and money at this restaurant that will happily serve its customers miserable food under the guise of being gourmet, even if Anthony Bourdain did eat here...

For those who don't read long reviews: don't waste your time here. The food is good, but not good enough to justify how bad the service is and the fact that they tack on a cute little service charge (only for tourists) that is not mentioned anywhere on their menu.

We arrived 5min early for our reservation and were looked at, but pointedly ignored, by the waiter. Under busier circumstances, I would empathize, but this was a Tuesday. It wasn't that busy. So, after waiting for nearly 10mins to be seated, we are shown to the only unset table in the outdoor space.

Neither my wife or I have ever felt so unwelcome at a restaurant in our lives. The waiter rolled his eyes when we didn't order alcoholic drinks, the food took nearly an hour - cachio e pepe should literally never take that long - and was rude enough that the table next to us leaned over to check in on how we were doing.

Come to find out, they also tack on that fun service charge at the end, which, after a bit of googling, we learned that this is something they charge anyone they deem looks like a tourist. Ordinarily, I would have taken issue with it, but in the moment I looked at it as a 15% charge to have the privilege of never speaking to any of them again. I was also told by the waiter that that if I didn't want to wait to pay (another 15min of waiting while he doesnt do his job, hard pass). Having worked in the service industry myself in my teens and 20's, if I had ever treated customers the way I was treated this evening without the egregious missteps on their part, I would have been fired immediately. I don't expect us to be friends, chat, be treated like royalty, etc, just basic human respect. We weren't late, loud, drunk, rude, demanding - any of the many ways that tourists can make themselves unwelcome.

There are loads of incredible restaurants where the waitstaff aren't actively contemptuous, the food is equally as good, it'll arrive in a timely fashion, and they won't scam you out of an additional 15%. Don't go here, you're doing yourself a...