Roma, Riyadh... The italian dream or...

The bread.... You enter a restaurant and you are extremely hungry, low and behold, the first thing that comes to you is a selection of bread, along with a side of butter and green as well as black olive paste. it is most certainly the best quality and freshest table bread a restaurant has to offer in Riyadh. I always have to keep the bread away from me, otherwise my dinner will be consisting of nothing but bread and butter :) The olive paste even though oily is actually really good especially with the balsamic vinegar.

We were a party of 18, and the service was pretty good. Do not expect all the starters or entrees to be delivered at the same time in Roma. The servings come in waves of four to eight dishes at a time. So if you are going to wait for all the food to come to the table.... For smaller parties the food will come at the same time.
I would describe the food in Roma to be more of an southern Italian style. I am in by no means an expert about all regions of Italian food, but that is the feeling i get. In southern i mean, pasta dishes that are made with heavier sauces, cream, lots of cheese, and pink sauces. My ritual in Roma, is to order an espresso as soon as i arrive. Sometimes I order an espresso with one scoop of vanilla ice cream as my starter (yup coffee/sugaraholic) once they come, I pour my espresso or most of it atop the ice cream, and have my desert as my first. The espresso there is excellently made(check my last post about excellent espresso), They do use the same coffee beans as those used by Anthurium, yet i still like the Anthurium espresso more, and i am not entirely sure of the reason. For me the espresso in Roma is a tidbit more bitter. guess this will need more investigating.

Back to the menu, starters and salads such as carpacio, fried calamari, insalata caprese are amongst the dishes offered, I opted for the tomato soup. and i have to say it is a must try. It is not a spicy tomato soup, but i have seen people people who turned it into an ocean of chili flakes. and it tastes excellent no matter what you decide to do with it. Pastas are well done, and not overcooked, but if you want a real al dente pasta, don't forget to tell ur waiter the magic word 'al dente'. Pastas are served with couple of choices for sauces, yet from experience, you can attempt asking the chef to make you any style of sauce you could think of -I wounder if they make a potanesca, someone should try asking for that- I have tried many of the sauces, and they are all very good. My own preference is the simplest and lightest 'tomato e basilico' (not on the menu but u can always ask for it).
The main dishes are excellent, I have never ordered one that i got disappoint in, whether it was beef, lamb, or fish.


In summery I would say the rating for this restaurant (amongst others in Riyadh) is as follows:

Food : 9
Starters: 9
Salads: 7
Pastas: 9
Meat : 9
Sea Food: 9
Desert :7
Service : 8 (for party more than 6) , 9 (for smaller party)
Ambiance: 8
Hygiene: 9.5
Acoustics : 9


Please feel free to add your comments whether to support or oppose this review, it is only my opinion, and it would be nice to hear others opinion about this restaurant.

Reviewed by Layth Sudairy