Caffé Italia — Restaurant in Rotterdam

I went to Caffe Italia with a friend after work. Simple plan - Aperol, a snack and a lot of good talk after a long day at the office. We sat down, ordered our Aperol and pizza to share, satisfied with the friendly service (a foreign, friendly, new girl). A few minutes later we got our Aperols Spritz (with mint and black olive inside) by another very friendly lady, also telling us that it's her second day. Unfortunately the Aperol was not really what we were used to (and trust me, I had a looooot of aperols in Italy, I make them myself, I know the taste and proportions). The truth is that our Aperol was mainly water, with a bit of Aperol and maybe a drop of Prosecco. Overa noll, we could also order sparkling water and wouldn't taste a difference. The sweet waitress came after we took the first sip to ask if everything was alright. Very politely, I told her that unfortunately our aperols are very watery and not really what we expected and as much as I absolutely don't want to cause her trouble, I would like to get what I ordered. The sweet girl said that she totally understands and it's her second day but she would love us to be happy with the order, so she will get the new ones for us and take the old ones back to the bar. And then the fun part begins... A second later the owner of the place comes out and asks us what is wrong. I repeat (reeeeeally politely), telling that I absolutely do not want to offend anyone or make anyone feel uncomfortable but I just would like to get an actual Aperol. And then he comes into the discussion, telling me that maybe we have a weird taste but he has a special, proper measure cup and that although he's not Italian, he has been working for 13 years serving Italian food so he knows what Aperol is. Once again I told him that I didn't want to offend him and I trust that he works a long time doing this but it's just not what I ordered and would pay 10 EUR for... It got to the point of me saying that I do not want to continue the discussion as it got very unfriendly with the man telling us that we don't know what Aperol tastes like and overall that he knows what he does and we are ignorant not knowing what Aperol is. 😅 He got back to the bar and didn't make us any other drink, so we ate our pizza, without any drink and asked for a bill where the aperols were of course included. No worries, we paid only for the pizza and did not leave any tip. This situation was so bizarre that it just distroyed my mood... and it was enough to add a bit of Aperol and Prosecco to the drink, as it should have been done in the first place. I normally do not write reviews this long and this negative but Caffe Italia unfortunately deserves this comment. I feel very sorry for these sweet waitresses but clearly they come and go since all of them were there for one or two days. (Ladies! I wish you a better work place, you deserve it!) Dear tourists, there are a lot of good places in Rotterdam. Caffe Italia...

I really liked pizza and tomato soup there. But everytime something was wrong with other food we ordered. Once the carbonara was surely overcooked, my girlfriend just didn’t eat it and at the end politely respond to the question “if everything was okay” that it was overcooked. Boss respond to her that it was good and she surely doesn’t know how it needs to be done yet still wanted to give some discount even though we didnt want to get.

Anyways we get back there few more times, and except of waiting time and poor service that didn’t really care to turn on the heat outside, food was good.

Until my finally and surely last time I was there. We ordered with our friend two big Peroni’s as we do almost everytime. We received it in heineken glass but that was usual to get it that way. The problem was the beer was definitely rotten, one of them was worse than the other one, yet both of them was undrinkable. We kindly said to the waitress that something is wrong with it and we got an answer: The beer is good, im gonna check and ask boss - he is drinking it now. So we were waiting for any answer, if we gonna get some other beer or anything for about 20minutes. Not even a word was spoken to us. We’ve got thirsty so I went up to the bar for 2 heinekens. We’ve got our food after a long time waiting and I had a small hope that those two beers, that we took only one awful sip from, are gonna be taken away of the bill but that didn’t happend. I used to leave fair amount of money there but that was...

Turns out the children's pasta bolognese and pizza margarita are much better than both the lasagna & pasta aglio e olio we ordered. In fact I tried a piece of the pizza and loved it. So let's all go back to being kids for a better experience! 😉

The lasagna had lots of layers and cheese but only a bit of bechamel on the top and the expected minced meat sauce was virtually absent. Be a bit more generous with the bolognese sauce and bechamel so you don't end up with something as dry/sticky.

Then there was the pasta. It tasted very strange. We had an amusing discussion amongst ourselves on how this could have happened. The chef on the other end of the table said something about different olive oil grades, which I think is fair and polite. But I think a few bouillon blocks were dissolved in the water instead to give it this taste. I really hope it's not true!

The waitress was very friendly and went out of her way to entertain the kids. But when she asked whether I liked the lasagna I gave an honest answer and then... nothing happened. Why even bother asking then?

You see in Holland everything is always up for debate, so at least this could have resulted in a manager coming to our table in order to explain to us that we just have a bad taste etc. But that didn't happen! As a native this is kind of a missed opportunity to me since this is our way! 🤭😄

To be fair today was Kings Day which is an absolute nightmare day for restaurants because of potential staffing...