Seth Follansbee
Google
My wife and I had dinner at Felice on September 6th, 2024. The food was above average, but the service and overall experience was pretty much a disaster and proved to be a sad end-note to our time in Italy, as we flew home the very next day.
A friend whose family owns a restaurant in the suburbs of Roma had recommended Felice for good Carbonara, etc., as their own restaurant was closed for vacation during our trip to Roma.
We could only get a 10:15pm reservation about 5 days ahead, which we gladly accepted and thought was a good sign.
We arrived a little early and fortunately there were lots of open tables at the late hour and were seated right away. Despite all the empty tables inside and out, we were seated in the cramped entry room with the reception podium/desk, which held only 3 tables (all vacant), and access to the toilets.
After a careful study of the menu, we ordered the suppli, a mixed salad, spaghetti with carbonara, tonnarelli cacio e Pepe and a nice bottle of Chianti wine. Unfortunately the suppli was sold out and our now second server recommended their eggplant parmigiana.
Fortunately the Chianti came relatively quickly and was delicious, followed shortly by their complimentary bread with oil & vinegars, then the eggplant and mixed salad. The Eggplant was nothing to write home about, which was disappointing and the salad was fine except the tomatoes were rock hard and clearly far from ripe.
This is when the wheels came off - after finishing the eggplant and salad, we had to wait about 53 minutes or more to receive our pasta dishes, despite after only 15-20 minutes of sitting idle another server who had walked by multiple times stopped and ask what we were waiting for. Then yet another server came out to explain our order was not fully put in, a mistake they admitted readily, but as the time continued to drag on we couldn’t understand the continued hold-up.
The perplexing thing was the entrance podium/desk was occupied the entire time by a restaurant staff member only feet away from us. She never intervened or chimed in until we ordered dessert. But perhaps the strangest of all, was the manager sat at a table right next to us, not 2 feet from ours, and enjoyed a two course meal, including pasta, while we sat idle, waiting and waiting and waiting for our own pasta dishes. He didn’t seem to notice our wait time or discomfort turn to aggravation. (BTW the service we received in Florence was universally very good and engaging. Roma was much more hit or miss.)
Finally the spaghetti with carbonara and tonnarelli cacio e Pepe arrived, the later they mix table-side. The infamous carbonara was good, though very heavy; the cured pork bits added a crunchy texture and a salty meaty flavor. The cacio e Pepe was even better and rivaled the same dish served two nights prior at another highly rated restaurant also in Roma.
We ended our meal with Felice’s unique version of tiramisu, which was excellent and 2 glasses of limoncello that helped to settle our full meal. Upon ordering these final items our server and the podium staff member made it clear they would be comped due to our long wait, which was appreciated, but at that point we were over it and just hoped to get out of there as quickly as they could serve us.
Over the course of the night we had 4 separate servers, as well as the manger lending service. I wish we hadn’t been seated in that entry room, as it made me feel like a kid in grade school forced to stand in the corner for being wrongfully accused and, the parade of customers by our table to and from the toilet was beyond annoying - that alone dampened our experience. But our near hour between courses, in an almost empty restaurant mind you, was simply inexcusable and a sad end to our chapter in Italy.
