Taverna Romana — Restaurant in Rome

NOTHING SPECIAL ! It was an interesting 2 hour limo drive from Pompeii to our rental apartment in Monti, Rome on Sunday afternoon. After unpacking and freshening up the plan was to head out for dinner at a Roman restaurant barely 50 feet from our front door. My wife had done a bit of research online and Taverna Romana looked ideal for our first meal in Rome. Decent ratings on Yelp...118 reviews at 4 stars and 2230 reviews at 4.4 stars on Google Maps. Keep in mind that Yelp is of little interest to Italian diners in Italy. GOOD PLAN ! We headed out the door at 6.30pm, took a left and walked a very short distance to the restaurant. WE BLEW IT ! We should have turned right to get here instead we had a very poor dinner at a tourist trap with an almost identical business name. After dinner we walked past here and I headed inside clear the air so to speak. A female server gave me their business card and said we should make a dinner reservation if we plan to dine here. She also said the restaurant where we had just dined mistakenly was designed and named to appear like Taverna Romana. OKAY ! To make amends we came back here for dinner the next evening. We didn't have a reservation but instead arrived early at 6.45pm...the place opens at 7pm. Not much activity at that time inside or on the street.....one other couple was waiting to get in. Then a few more customers showed up until there was maybe about 20 people waiting. NO PROBLEM ! It wasn't a very large restaurant but they also provided outdoor dining. A bit after 7pm a female staff member opened the doors and asked who had reservations. Then she proceeded to read off a list one by one until everyone who had a reservation had gone inside to claim a table. A BIT WEIRD ! We were left in the street along with a couple of others. Finally we were asked to come inside and were shown to a table in their secondary dining room...a very drab looking room indeed. ROMAN PASTA ! Pasta and wine were their specialties we found out. A female server eventually came by our table to see what we wanted to order. BEER ! The only beer on offer was an atypical Italian beer. I ordered one. It became apparent very early on our female server spoke very little English and didn't know how to smile in Italian. To say the menu was brief would be an understatement. When my ice cold Italian beer hit the table we made our dinner selection. We ordered from FIRST COURSES ( PASTA ) 1 x Spaghetti Carbonara ( eggs, pecorino cheese, black pepper and pork cheek ), 1 x Bucatini Gricia ( pecorino romano cheese, pork cheek and black pepper ) and for dessert 1 x Pear and Chocolate Cake. Our female server certainly wasn't givin' us any love. My Italian beer tasted just an Italian beer....boring ! Our pasta dishes came out pretty fast courtesy of Miss Smiles. They looked good and the pasta was cooked perfectly. But where was the flavor....the minimalistic ingredients were not enough to make it even interesting for either of us. THIS IS ROMAN FOOD ! Of course we have eaten at good Italian restaurants all over the USA and in Australia a million times..we love it but this bland Roman style cuisine was not our thing. DESSERT ! Out came our Pear and Chocolate Cake.....it looked like a pie. Again it tasted like something concocted in Blandsville. Look the food here was not at all expensive it simply wasn't what we expected. THE SERVICE WAS...

Was recommended this restaurant by a local (Table of 3 for lunch). It started out fine; we got seated, got our wine, and ordered our food, then it went south. After 30 minutes, our side of veggies came out…15 minutes before any entrees. One entree (pasta) finally came out, I kindly asked if the veggies could be remade since by now they weren’t fresh. No problem. The pasta was incredibly salty, more salty than any other authentic Italian food I’ve ever had. They offered to make me something else, which was fine. Another 15 minutes go by, still missing 2 entrees, but what comes? Our remade veggies!! Tick tock, more time goes by and we are still without entrees and every other table has come and gone with full bellies. We ask for the bill and the waitress disappears clearly flustered. I go inside to explain to which I am ignored until I approach the female manager with money prepared to settle the bill and leave. The waitress then takes notice, joins the manager behind the counter and rudely confirms that we didn’t receive any of our food other than the salty pasta. I said, “yes, we waited and watched everyone else get food” and offered to pay for our wine. The manager prints our bill and with attitude, slaps it on the counter and says “here’s your bill, you can go”. Okay…needless to say, I’m shocked by the experience considering the reviews are mostly positive. Maybe our food ticket was lost? who knows, but no apology was said by anyone but me yet we walked away hungry…disappointed to...

TL;DR: Cacio e Pepe more like cacio e poopoo.

The sauce was completely broken and pasta overcooked. You can easily DIY this by dumping cottage cheese over some noodles. Just one of the many indicators that they didn’t care and thought we wouldn’t notice because we were tourists.

Please don’t wait in line for this.

Reading the reviews, it seems like this place can be a hit or miss depending on the mood of the manager. HE WAS TERRIBLE.

Like some of the other unfortunate hungry reviewers, we were without a reservation. It took a while to get someone to acknowledge us but they were busy so that was understandable. We were told there were no open tables but were assured we would be given the first table available. We were happy to wait.

However, what we didn’t know is that he was profiling us against "richer" older couples who came by and also began to wait and THREE pairs were sat before us. When the first and second pair were sat, I assumed that they had a reservation. It was when the third couple came and were seated before us that I realized that this was simply NOT the case.

Restaurants have small margins and business is business but it was just plain disrespectful to waste our time and if he had told us that our wait would be an hour, we would’ve went elsewhere.

I wish negative stars...