With the premise that I grew up in this neighbourhood, a new eatery is in town.
Ingredients are excellent - hopefully the place will improve even more.
Came here with a 50% discount with the TheFork, with 2 pasta, 1 main, 1 side dish, bottle of water and after discount we paid 57€ (114€ would have been steep as I rather had 114 for smaller more gourmet dish than for the quantity).
Having said this and although it might seem expensive (the bill would have been double) the foods' portion were really way too much - but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Location: right on the main square of Ostia where all the eateries are, the place is very quite during the day, especially at lunch.
Ambiance: casual decor, mostly black and white placing with the tv on on MTV. Some might fight annoying but it's definitely a very casual place.
Food: the portions are really huge. Having said this we both ordered the specials of the day which meant that we didn't have any oversight of the prices.
My linguine con vongole e bottarga felt it had double the amount of pasta that you usually get, the bottarga very generous although the clams were not that great. Some notes of over acidity which, when you make at home isn't there. (Pasta con le vongole is my favorite go to dish)Yet, the linguine with the catch of the day with the cherry tomatoes that my partner had was absolutely amazing. The fish was incredibly fresh, and it's very unusual to use an entire fish to make one single sauce. It was priced at 25€ which is on the high side (usually it's the price for sauces with lobsters) but it was well worth it - again an easy dish that could be for two people.
But what I kept on asking the staff to select a SMALL fish, came out to be a 1kg of sole (sogliola/branzino); too much for us and at the price of 60€.
Again: ingredients are fresh, the flavours are on the right spots, portions are immense.
Service: very attentive and gracious. Wifi provided, you can also charge your phone.
My advise is to come here when you're hungry or please confirm with the staff should you choose to go for the fresh catch of the day. It was definitely a surprise, one that we enjoyed, and the price/quality is there, the bill without discount would have been 114€ which I could argue that the food that was served could have very easily served 4 people (bringing the price to less than 30€).
Would have enjoyed more if I knew ahead of time and ordered less but that's a minor detail. read more