I made friends with a few local Romans during my recent visit and they gave me very solid advice when it comes to choosing a place to eat anywhere in Italy based on online reviews: if the site is mostly English and there are no Italian reviews, stay away even if the ratings are high. On the other hand, if there are lots of Italian reviews and their rating are high, it's a pretty solid bet.
I know it sounds discriminatory but I get the logic. Local Italians and local Romans know their food far better than visiting American tourists. What might be "excellent" to a tourist who doesn't know any better and can't compare it to other local establishments might be considered garbage by local Italian palates and standards. In fact almost all of them told me that most restaurants in central Rome are not very good and the really excellent Italian restaurants by Italian standards are actually far out in the suburbs, far from the touristic areas and hubs of Rome.
So when I found this restaurant on Yelp and given that it had a few decent Italian reviews and it was within a rock's throw from my hotel, I came here for dinner one night and was quite pleased that I came. I had the old standby Roman classic, Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe (Spaghetti with cheese and black pepper). Simple dish, if you screw that up, then you're hopeless and it doesn't bode well for anything else. They did it very well. I also had Veal Marsala with some vegetables and finished everything off with tiramisu. All of it was great. Service was friendly, the owner speaks English and my older Italian waiter who did not speak English nonetheless understood everything I tried communicating in my pidgin Italian. Prices are very reasonable. read more