Café Trastevere

Do not go here if you have ANY discount coupon, ie, barter or groupon. If you call and ask if you can use your barter coupon or groupon, they will tell you absolutely they take it and come on in. When your bill arrives, all hell breaks loose and an argument ensues as management tries to limit your coupon to ½ of it’s face value. These people will deny ever telling you they agreed to take any coupon and will argue loudly with you and ruin your entire night and alienate the entire restaurant. It’s too small, too hot, service sucks, the food is average at best, the wine is WAY overpriced, and they stand around and gawk at you during the entire meal. Diners beware!

I hadn’t been here since the late 1990s, when this place was a hot spot. Got a coupon through a corporate perks program and hoped for the best. It’s still a charming place but sadly it just doesn’t seem to be managed very well, and the food seems average now.
I stopped going in the late 1990s because the second set of owners put way too much garlic in everything. Not sure who owns it now, but it definitely seemed different in many ways.
We knew it would be a busy night (Mother’s Day weekend), so we planned to be extra patient with the service. What first struck me as odd is that we were asked whether we wanted to sit inside or out, and when we replied that we’d like to be outside, the server told us to go see if we could find ourselves a table (no host, so fend for yourself seemed to be the attitude). Otherwise, throughout the evening, the service was acceptable until the end, when it was time to order dessert – which was a very slow process – and then to receive the check, when we were ignored, even though the server walked by us several times and clearly could see that we’d finished our meal.
We started out with an Italian Pinto Noir that was very tasty for the price of only $ 8 for the glass (which totally surprised us). I had a insalata di rucola (arugula salad with gorgonzola, walnuts and balsamic vinegar (was supposed to be a vinaigrette, but it seemed like straight vinegar), which was pretty good – a large enough portion for two and contained a good amount of gorgonzola, but way too much vinegar; it was good, but not memorable. My date quite enjoyed the crab and corn bisque, which had a light, tasty broth. My main dish, linguine alle vongole – linguine with clams steamed in their own broth with garlic, fresh parsley, extra virgin olive oil and a touch of red pepper – seemed over salted, but otherwise bland, lacking garlic (I bit into one big chunk but otherwise tasted very little); I didn’t taste any pepper, red or otherwise, at all. The portion size was large and plentiful with clams, which were cooked appropriately and seemed fresh. My date enjoyed the spaghetti alla Bolognese but felt that it was also oversalted; other than that issue, he thought the sauce had a nice texture and was plentiful with meat. Dessert – the crème brulee was tasty but not extraordinary. For the price, I honestly expected a bit more.
The couple next to us had a very unfortunate experience – it seemed they had been forgotten about.
I think the place has potential and wish it had been a more fulfilling experience because I’d like to see it have a second life. I’d really give it a 2.5, but that’s not a choice. Hope they can get it together.

Ate there the other night: small, service is lacking. Food is okay. Don’t order the iced tea, it tastes like coffee and it costs $ 4.00. Ridiculous!!!

We visit this place quite a bit. It’s an old house converted to a ma and pa style. They do have 2 different areas of outdoor seating. I got the chicken piccata and I loved it, good flavor and chicken was cooked nice and tender. Also got the house salad and enjoyed their dressing. My sis got the linguine and clams sauce, that too had good flavor. My mom got the chicken Marsala it had good flavor but the chicken was over cooked. Service was slow and the server never came over to check on how the food was. I was gonna get someone but she said don’t bother. They both alway enjoyed their tiramisu for desert. So over all service was off, most of the most was very good and we will be back.

Great food great service and the location was perfect for me! We ordered the pesce del Giorno salmon special and the filetto Di maiale pork dish both were very good and served with green beans… when you check in here on Unilocal you get a free glass of wine. Always a winner in my book. The ambiance was quite dark and romantic. Perfect date spot.

I cane here because I had a gift certificate from a friend and recommended the place because I love Italian food. I would NOT have come here otherwise.
When we first walked in, my boyfriend and I saw two men at the bar, one much older and one younger (late 20s to early 30s). Turns out they were both servers of the evening, but you would have never known because one was sitting at the bar and the younger man was on his phone completely ignoring us. I get that it was a slow night when we visited but there were stil two tables right next to them.
We sat down and looked at the menu, which had quite a few items on it. The bread that was brought to us was hard and slightly stale. We ordered the angel hair pasta and veal marsala. The veal was much better than the angel hair. In fact, the angel hair tasted like something I could’ve made myself. Pretty disappointed but the meal, essentially, was free.
The food took a decent amount of time to come out, but the older man apologized for the time. He was very kind. The younger man wasn’t very helpful as he sat at the bar all night long just texting.
When we asked for a box and the check, it took about 10 minutes for each item individually. This poor man was doing everything himself. My boyfriend and I forgot to bring cash so we kindly asked if they could charge a credit card a cent or a dollar so that we could tip them. I’ve been a server and this is what I’ve done in the past. I don’t think that the man understood so he went to the younger man who just charged us 25% of our check. We signed it and left.
TLDR; you can find better food with better service at Brio for the same price.

Friendly staff, food was good. Groupon came in handy… It was raining they day I was there so we were cramped in a small room with no A/​C. I’d give this place a second try only if the A/​C is fixed or when the patio is open.

This is a truly authentic experience, all the way down to the service. Good food, very casual service. It feels like your visiting your Italian grandmother and she is cooking you a home cooked meal. I had the penne pasta with the marinara, paired with a glass of wine for a perfect dinner by myself. Only complaint was the level of cleanliness.

Sorry!
Go to Olive Garden or carabbas!!!
Overpriced crap! Every entrée overpriced by 5 $
Nothing else to say!
Kitchen by bathrooms
Can see into
Kitchen which was filthy at 6pm with restaurant empty???
Gross!!!

It’s located in an old house and has been in Orlando for a long time. Been coming here for a while. The same people are still there serving you. Started off with the cheese stuffed fried ravioli, not a fan on fried ravioli but theirs was good and the sauce had great flavor. Got the house salad, it’s a salad lol, do like their house dressing tho. My entrée was the chicken piccata and it didn’t fail me. This is how I judge Italian restaurants is on piccata. This place has one of the best in town, 3 medallions of chicken breast with capers served in a lemon sauce on a bed a spaghetti. The service was good and they do have outdoor sitting. This is one of my fav in town and haven’t been disappointed. Recommend it to all and their food has the wow factor.

This place was such an awesome find. It’s REAL authentic Italian food, which is something a lot of people don’t seem to understand. They take their time, they make it right.
We sat outside in February on a nice, cooler night. The atmosphere outside is very romantic. It wasn’t very busy and we were seated immediately. We were served by a very tentative waitress. We had our complimentary bread. A bruschetta appetizer. For my meal, I ordered the penne ala vodka, which is TO DIE FOR. It has salmon in it which pulls the dish together so nicely.
It wasn’t too expensive for 2 people either. Definitely check this place out.

We had a bottle of cali riesling crab corn bisque caprese salad bruschetta filet mignon amd fra diavola and it was exquisite! We sat outside and it was romantic too!

Ordered take our from here on a Friday night and the food was terrible!!! Spent almost $ 70 for a caprese salad that was minuscule, tomatoes that were mealy and had almost no seasoning. The pasta bolognese had no cheese and the sauce was mediocre at best, the cheese tortellini also had no seasoning and was advertised to include peas and pancetta which were almost non-​existent. My boyfriend ordered veal Marsala. The sauce was oily, under seasoned, and tasted like it had canned mushrooms and the veal was soggy and overcooked. The tiramisu cost almost $ 8 and is barely enough to share. A completely disappointing experience — I will never go here again and will damn sure tell my friends not to either.

I read the reviews, and came (anyway). A good thing we did, as our dinner was very good. The service was good and the veal dish was very nice. I thought the prices were reasonable. I will be back.

I have never sweated so much in a restaurant in my entire life. This place is a house converted into a restaurant. There’s only about 8 tables inside, the rest are outside. I can’t believe I’m saying this – but I wish I had a table outside (and it’s July). We were sat in the bar area where there was no a/​c or fans. I’ve also never seen ice not exist in a water glass. I ordered wine literally because it was cold. Beyond that, I ran out of water twice and unfortunately, only the first glass ever had ice. After that, the ice was clearly already melted. Ever been so thirsty you were literally were happy to drink luke warm water? I have been. The food was mediocre at best. Maybe it’s because the food was warm but I was already dying of heat.

I’d like to write a review refuting the bad ones. This restaurant is ITALIAN. The servers are Italian. The kitchen is Italian. And they don’t move fast in Italy. Meals are meant to be savored and preparation takes a while because they take pride in their food. Personally, I’ve always had aloof servers who don’t seem to care very much about things other than the components of their job serving and I’m ok with that because that’s why they are there — to serve. The food is always good and plentiful. It’s just not AMERICA — there aren’t crazy drink specials and the service isn’t rapid fire and happy go lucky. But there’s nothing wrong with that. I encourage people to eat here as long as they know that it’s Italian and therefore, different.

So I had an appointment in the downtown area and I could not help but notice this gem outside. I was like cute café style I am in there like swim wear. When I walked inside it was so cozy, intimate, and peaceful. The experience got even better when I checked in on Unilocal and I scored a free glass of wine. I opted for a wonderful smooth glass of Cabarnet.
The waitress recommended the Vitello Parmigiana, which is thinly sliced veal topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese, over a bed of spaghetti. I am so happy that I took the waitress upon her recommendation because the food was tender, delicious, and simply a scrumptious Italian dish.
Yummy in my tummy!
I loved everything about this place, the atmosphere, the customer service, the food. The price ranges are anywhere from 16.00 dollars to 28.00 dollars for a plate, and this place is so worth the price. Veal is not a dish that I look forward to because not everyone makes it in the proper fashion, but this place definitely reignited my love affair with veal.

Ok, I’m going to be honest. A co-​worker wanted to try this place. It was right up the street from our hotel, so we walked. As we approached, I was horrified. It looked like something out of a horror movie. Like a restaurant you go into but never come out of.
It was a little building, like someone’s house. It had a neon «OPEN» sign in the upstairs window. When we walked in, there were literally 5 tables in what looked like someone’s living room. It was very intimate.
The server wasn’t overly friendly. He took our order and brought our food, and that’s about it. The saving grace of this experience was the food. The food was excellent. If the food wasn’t good, this place would be bizarre.
I checked in on Unilocal,to take advantage of the check-​in offer which was a free glass of wine. I gave it to the server, and he told me it wasn’t valid on the glass of wine I ordered. My glass of wine was $ 9 and he said it was only valid on the house glass of wine for $ 7. I showed him that the offer didn’t specify and he still gave me a hard time.
The atmosphere and service were weird, but the food was great. Maybe get take-​out?

I met my wife here one day after work for dinner. We both ordered a fried ravioli appetizer. Very tasty appetizer that we both shared, but one of my raviolis was cool. I kind of wondered why? The Marinara sauce that came with it was very good.
Our entrées were Zuppa Di Pesce Alla Romana this also was very tasty, very good, I enjoyed entire dish. but my question is, for $ 26, why can’t I get a salad? This is such a litmus test for my wife, that she was so upset, she does not want to come back. Throw some greens on a dish will ya! Poor a little olive oil, and some vinegar on it and tell me that it’s salad.
The location is very quaint, very romantic, and it looks like it was a home one time. Thank goodness I had
coupons for this evening’s meal so I feel like I got a pretty good value out of it.
After everything was said and done, we went home and had a cup of coffee.

The food was OKAY. The environment was very romantic but was shortly ruined after poor, inattentive service. I’ve learned to NOT share with servers that I’m using a groupon until the end of the meal.
Isn’t the point of groupon to bring customers in and try your hardest to retain them? They seriously did not care!
We were there for 1.5 hours. That’s not how I wanted to spend my evening and I will not be coming back. Groupon or no groupon.

I approach Groupon-​funded meals with extreme caution, and places life Café Trastevere are the reason why.
First, I don’t believe the restaurant has AC. Mid-​summer, and we all dressed nicely since we were going to a classy restaurant, and we are sweaty and seated an a very confined, close corner of the restaurant. Unfortunately, that was the least of this place’s problems.
Next, we order. Service was ridiculously slow. I think we waited 45 minutes for food, and ended up being here for 1.5 hours in all between waiting for the server to take our order, waiting for the food, then waiting for the check.
My chicken piccata was pounded into oblivion. Rubbery, inedible, and had a sickly pallor to the plate making it completely unappealing. The antipasto offered a paltry serving of meat, and some unidentifiable substances to accompany.
I don’t know how this place is still in business. Unknowing Grouponers? Not worth the Groupon, not worth the hours of my life sitting in a sauna, or the dry cleaning bill for the sundress I wore to dinner and bore the brunt of my Florida summer glistening.

I tried out this restaurant without reading any reviews which is something I don’t normally do. I’m going to be as honest as I can with this review. I ordered the chicken Alfredo and it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great either. My wife is a vegan and she ordered a plate of mixed vegetables which she loved. So that was a good thing.
While the food was ok, one thing that concerned me was the service. The guy that served us was fairly nice but seemed very short and not very accommodating. This was our 1^st time here and when you go to a nice restaurant and spend good money you expect to get a certain level of care. By the time we left we felt like no one cared that we were even there. No one said anything to us as we left. We just felt kinda awkward the whole time.
When my wife and I got back home, we went online to check out some of the reviews to see if anyone had experienced what we felt. And we were not surprised to read a lot of other reviewers that experienced a lot of the things that we felt and experienced.
I’m not the kind of reviewer that bashes local businesses but I really hope that they take these reviews as constructive criticism. No one likes to be in a restaurant where they feel like it doesn’t matter if they are there are not. If anyone would have at least stopped us before we left and said something like «hope you come back» or something of the sort, we would have considered coming back. Now it’s up in air.
I really would like to come back on a different night and try a different dish and give them another chance. We did come on a slow night (Wednesday) and maybe that has something to do with it. I really don’t know. But it doesn’t help make our decision easy when we left feeling very weird about the kind of service we got. So I guess we will see…

I am giving this place 1 star. That’s the amount of questions the waitress answered before she stopped being helpful. I think she was upset we didn’t get wine and took it out on us, that or she knew she was charging us 20% tip because we had a groupon. But that’s fine, whatever reason she had to treat us like that, I’ll never be back, so I hope she enjoys that tip because this place will not get another dime from me.
But the fury I carry for this waste of space restaurant extends far beyond the terrible service — it includes the «food.» I use quotes because the chicken piccata my girlfriend got is not something I would feed a dog. I get that they hammer the chicken down so it’s flat, but then they cooked the ever-​loving crap out of it so it has the consistency of rubber — and for $ 18, I think I can expect edibility, if not deliciousness.
I got an antipasto and while the Italian sausage was excellent, there was maybe 2 oz of it and it was far outweighed by under-​ripe tomatoes, some odd eggplant item that looked like pumpernickel bread and couldn’t be finished by any of the 5 people at the table… the second best part of the antipasto was the Giardiniera, which I hope it made in house, but could have been from a can… maybe preferable that it comes from the can. They also charge $ 3-​$ 4 is you share, which might be worth it, two friends split the veal and they seemed to like it, but no one told us about the sharing charge which I find offensive.
Lastly the desserts — only a few are made in house, and while the waitress recommended the tiramisu, we didn’t finish that either, we did get through the cannoli, but for 5 of us to split 2 desserts… you can be sure neither was anything to write home about.
Honestly, I wouldn’t go back if it were free, thankfully we had a groupon, but for that quality of food, I’d rather just go to Olive Garden and pocket the extra $ 20 a person.

I had nearly a mirror experience as Lisa M. did a few reviews down.
To start — we attempted to make reservations several times over the course of two days. No one answered the phone at any hour that we called.
When we walked in to be seated, we were ignored for about five minutes. Finally, a woman asked us if we wanted to sit inside or out. We ultimately decided outside since the dining room was so small, and felt so incredibly stuffy. The wait staff did not seem attentive once they pegged us as «inexpensive» (ordered just water and had a
coupon — let the waitress know at the beginning that we had one; we were all dressed nicely for the evening as well). It took 20 minutes from seating to when we actually had someone stop by the table and take our order.
I personally felt more like a nuisance than anything else when I asked for a refill once for my water. My glass sat empty for half of my visit.
Had the calamari and spicy marinara sauce — the sauce tasted like lukewarm Ragu spaghetti sauce (no spice whatsoever), and the calamari was greasy, rubbery, and salty.
I personally ordered the lasagna — and you know, it was quite possibly the worst lasagna that I have ever eaten. It was EXTREMELY salty and the grease was so thick, it was a gigantic puddle inside of the bowl the lasagna was sitting in. I couldn’t even get halfway through the lasagna.
I asked for a dessert menu, and the waitress very quickly rattled off the list — decided on a slice of cheesecake. It was obvious that it was a small slice from a box, not homemade. She was also put off when I thanked her politely, but declined to add «homemade berry sauce» to it — she seemed annoyed that I wanted «just a plain piece of cheesecake and nothing else.»
When paying, we put the
coupon on top of the payment holder, and (I assume it was the owner) a man came by to pick it up. He rudely asked, «What is THAT?» Explained it was a coupon for the restaurant, and before we could continue, he interrupted and asked how much it was for.
I won’t try this place again. We were there an hour and thirty minutes — the food would have been better at Olive Garden, would have been less expensive, and would have been faster. We certainly weren’t enjoying the ambiance of sitting outside, either — the patio could use a good cleaning, the lights NEED to be repaired. Wait staff needs to be retrained or hire more.

I’ve had several group dining experiences here at their upstairs banquet room and never had a problem. However, as a normal customer, that’s where things fell apart.
The building and ambiance are definitely a higher-​class, romantic, intimate spot. I feel that we were marked as a cheap couple as soon as we walked in, as my roommate had on a t-​shirt and a (nice) pair of shorts (I was in a blouse and skirt). It took a few moments to be seated, even though there were plenty of staff walking about and quite a few empty tables. After that, it took a few more moments before we were asked about drinks. I could tell the waiter was unhappy that we ordered iced tea and coffee — no alcohol.
The staff seemed to mostly ignore us and treat us with the minimum amount of courtesy since we didn’t seem to be the «high roller» type of customer. I had finished my glass of iced tea and placed it near the end of the table and was half way through my water glass before finally having to flag down the waiter for a refill.
The food was okay but not impressive to mark as «the place to go to for (insert dish name)». I had the Pollo Francese which had a wonderful sauce but the chicken could have been cooked a little less as it was a bit tough. The Saltimbocca ala Romana also suffered the same tough meat due to overcooking — something that should never happen with veal.
For $ 16 and 18 respectively (or may have been 18 and 20) I feel it was a bit overpriced, especially since there was no soup or salad accompanying the main dish (meat, pasta and a small bit of seasonal veggies). I ordered a cup of the crab and corn bisque which was way too sweet but at least had nice real crab meat. My roommate ordered the spinach salad which had a pool of vinaigrette at the bottom and was a bit pricey at $ 10 for a bowl of spinach with walnuts, gorganzola, tomatoes, and mushrooms.
I could’ve put my food nit-​picking aside had it not been for the service. I felt very uncomfortable after we were seated — as if we weren’t welcome but they were serving us anyway. I was almost embarrassed to use a
certificate to pay for part of our meal — but now thinking about it I’m glad I did not pay full price.
I don’t think I will be returning due to the service — none of the food was remarkable enough to ensure an uncomfortable dining experience at that price.