Romanè — Restaurant in Rome

Disappointing dinner. We had high expectations for this restaurant, having talked to a Roman friend who said Romané is his favorite restaurant in Rome. We are both chefs and we are in Rome mainly to eat plus our Roman friend is a real gourmand so we were excited to eat here. We came on December 4th, a Sunday, for dinner. Was going to order à la carte but the waiter convinced us to go with the prix fixe menu instead. The antipasto was ok, a huge fried meatball with chicory sauce. The pasta we both did not like, BTW, the only pasta dish in Rome we did not enjoy. The dish was a fettuccine dish with fresh pasta that was a bit too thick, giving the pasta too much chew. The pasta had some sort of sliced ham in it. The ham was thinly sliced and tasteless, which made me think it was packaged ham and it did taste like it. The second course was the famous Romané pollo alla cacciatora. Again it was disappointing. The sauce was delicious but the chicken was not cooked well. The chicken in pollo alla cacciatora should be well cooked and falling off the bone but our pollo alla cacciatora came just cooked with quite firm flesh. It needed another 30 minutes of slow cooking on the stove. After the 3 disappointing dishes, I can’t even remember the dessert. One reason we thought was the problem was that it was Sunday, a day most Roman restaurants close. We sat by the kitchen and saw the 2 cooks in the kitchen was quite young, early 20’s or younger. Not saying young chefs can’t cook but in a restaurant serving family recipes, the 2 young chefs may be still a bit green and they were not supervised. We do not think that Romané is bad given that our Roman friend has a great palette. Perhaps we went on an off night. Whatever the case, we were very...

Came late on a Tuesday evening at 9:45pm with no reservation. There were open tables but we were told we could only sit outside. That's fine, it wasn't too cold and there was a heat lamp. We got the spaghetti, lasagna, fettona panata and 1 glass of wine.

The spaghetti was good, really fresh. The lasagna was just warmed through and the lasagna sheets were overly soft. We asked for the lasagna to be reheated in the microwave. It was ok, nothing too spectacular. The wait time between the pastas and the pork leg was really long, over 20 minutes, a bit too greasy but hot. No one came by to refill our water but did come to clear our plates. Service was generally really slow. The rush was over and the servers and kitchen staff were taking group breaks outside.

When we went up to pay, we saw a €6 charge and asked what it was. The server told us it was a service fee but my husband deduced it was for bread and said we didn't have any so the server gave us €5 back. We didn't care about the €1 difference. After we left, while we were waiting for the subway home, we noticed that they charged us for 2 glasses of wine when we only ordered 1. We couldn't go back to get refunded as we would have missed the last train home.

Kind of annoying that our dinner was not entered into the system correctly and we were overcharged. We can't say for certain if it was an honest mistake regarding the wine or not but the blatant lying about the "service fee" was not a good look. We went with high expectations and left disappointed. We would not recommend this place based on the lack of integrity and...

My family arrived around 12:30 for lunch, a group of 9. We were not told upon arrival that a reservation was needed, so we asked if there was a table for 9. The server immediately had an attitude with us, moving the table decorations on the large table as slow as possible and banging them on the table just loudly enough for us to be uncomfortable and want to leave. As I attempted to ask her, is this ok that we sit here, she snapped back with "I don't speak English!", and waved her colleague over to help translate. We told that server that we apologize for the inconvenience our large party seemed to be giving them and that we would leave. A simple "we only seat with reservations" would have sufficed, but there was only 1 person sitting inside when we arrived, so we didn't think we needed reservations for lunch.

Don't waste your time here. The response the restaurant gave to another member of our family was a total fabrication, minus they were going to sit us as the largest table they had, so the record needs to be set straight.

No, we didn't want to eat here because we did not feel welcome. It doesn't matter what table we were sat at, or if we were at 4 different because we understand 9 people is a lot, and not every restaurant has a table large enough to accommodate. It was the rude server and the looks and attitude she had that we did not want to stay and eat. That's why this review is not about the food, because we did not stay to eat. This review is to keep others from having the same bad...