Josh E.
Yelp
Warning: Honest review from our experience at this restaurant
Disclaimer: Sorry this is almost an essay(long)......
We picked to go to this restaurant because of the great reviews on google and yelp. Beautiful setting, tucked away from the maze of people around the pantheon area.
As we arrived at the restaurant, the staff were very nice and set us up with a table for our little group of four. They even offered to move us inside, thereby switching servers. That's when things seemingly went downhill.
Our new server seemed immediately flustered (or giving off a "what do you want!" vibe...) while taking our orders, and was fairly short with us regarding whether we would be ordering an appetizer or not. I'm married to a German so I know what direct and to-the-point entails, however never have I experienced this feeling in the Italian restaurant industry before(at least I haven't experienced things like this)....
Anyway, we ordered an appetizer (1st to arrive), some wine, four entrees (she pushed back fairly hard on us sticking to 2 of the pasta options only on the menu as from what we could tell others had ordered those two types the restaurant seemingly hedges bets on orders and cooks for what most tables are ordering?)... and a salad to share(she took mental notes of the entire order but the salad never arrived... no biggie, I guess)....
We figured it was busy, and they have a fairly small sized establishment, perhaps understaffed a bit I would guess?.
Well once we ordered, this server NEVER came back to our table to check on anything (meat under cooked, forgotten salad, water had run dry for our kids), or even made eye contact with us again during our meal. We observed the server being friendly to other tables, checking in on other tables, and we observed her chatting with other patrons and again... literally didn't make eye contact with us again during or after our meal. We then sat there for probably 35+ min observing her and trying to discreet flag her down to either check on the missing salad, or at least pay our bill.... I am not one to snap my fingers to get the waiters' attention, or raise my hand or whatever.... and at all the restaurants I've been over years throughout Europe and the US... I've never felt totally ignored after ordering food, except here.
We finally were able to get the attention of what appeared to be the owner(?), and asked for "il conto, per favore" which he then went to get as proxy for our server.... Thats when she came over asking if we wanted anything else like dessert, to which we replied 'no, just the bill so we can leave'. They brought the bill and went back into ignoring-us-mode for another 5-10 mins... I then stood up with credit card in my hand, which is when they brought the payment device over to allow me to pay and leave.
Time spent ordering then eating/enjoying the meal: 50min
Total time at the restaurant: 2.5 hrs
Will never go back again. The food was good, but not good enough to make up for the service. When in Rome, will stick to places like Alle Fratte di Trastevere and /or get some panini or pizza.