La Pancia Felice

25.12.- Restaurants sind entweder geschlossen oder du musst reserviert haben. Oder du musst dort einkehren, wo man noch ein Plätzchen für dich hat. Und das war wirklich nicht das Schlechteste.
Direkt an einer Straße gelegen, ist es ein absoluter Touristenmagnet, aber da wir auch welche sind, wollen wir nicht so sein.
Der Service ist schnell, freundlich-​professionell.
Essen war wirklich gut: Insalata Mista (gemischter Salat-​große Portion), Pasta mit Muscheln (4 Stück) und Artischocken, Pizza Diavolo mit Pilzen. Geschmeckt hat alles wirklich gut.

Irgendwann spät am Abend verschlug es uns hierhin. Wohl wissend, dass dies ein Touri-​Laden ist.
Die Einrichtung ist eine gelungene Mischung aus modernem Mobiliar und alten Dekoartikeln, durchaus nett. Der Service ist freundlich. Das Essen war ok — wir hatten Hunger, aber verglichen mit anderen Trattorias, die wir in Italien besucht haben, muss ich raten: Woanders geht das besser; zur Not aber auch hier.

Overall the quality of the food is a little subpar compared to other restaurants we’ve been to in our trip. The real complaint is the chintziness of the meals.
Bruschetta. The bread was toasted a little too much in some spots but other than that it was good. Lots of olive oil and lots of tomatoes.
Ravioli cheese and spinach with butter and sage. 3 thin pieces of ravioli in a mediocre sauce. I cannot complain about the flavour of the pasta since it was a nice combination of cheese and spinach… just not thick enough or enough of them.
Diavola (tomato, mozzarella, hot salami) pizza. It’s your typical think-​crust pizza but the sauce tastes like it came our of a can. And there was a whopping six little pieces of salami on the whole pizza.
Just keep walking… there’s a taverna every 20 feet in Rome.

We loved this restaurant. We liked it so much, we went twice. We thought is was the best restaurant in the area. I had the pizza and my wife had the pasta and they were outstanding. The waiter was friendly and we went in the kitchen and the chef showed us their ingredients. All fresh from the local market. It was great and close to the Vatican on the way in or out.

We were headed to another restaurant, but it was pouring so we ducked in here. What a mistake! Can you say Chef Boyardee? The spaghetti bolognese was probably the worse I’ve ever tasted. The spaghetti was over-​cooked, it tasted like tomato sauce from a can, and the meat was non-​existent. We also ordered a pizza which was okay, but nothing spectacular. Thank goodness though, otherwise we would have left hungry. My fiancé didn’t even finish his spaghetti and leaving a plate empty is a very rare occurrence for him.
On top of all that– we ordered bruschetta as a starter and our waiter admitted that he had made an error when my pizza came out as the starter. We told him we didn’t want the bruschetta anymore, but he brought it out anyway. It was a struggle for us to get it off the bill even though we hadn’t touched it. After all of that, we still ended up paying 30 € for mediocre food, a coke, and water.
This restaurant is really a poor representation of Italian food and they should be ashamed. I have no idea how this place has excellent ratings.