If you're looking for a taste of Rome, look elsewhere. I was left disappointed, especially after the amount of good reviews on Yelp. The restaurant is fun and quaint, cozy even. But given the plethora of great food options around the corner and in the surrounding neighborhood, Sellero & Ventresca's rather unseasoned, bland, and uninspiring cuisine left much to be desired. The prices were decent, but the food was disappointingly mediocre that it made me feel I was back home eating at a sappy franchise rather than a cultured Roman restaurant.
The staff's demeanor was definitely the worst we've encountered in Italy thus far. For a country that has widely impressed us with their kindness and politeness, the waiters and front desk here stand out from the bunch with their rather coldness.
The spaghetti carbonara was rich and creamy, but littered with unappetizing bits of chewy fat, and little actual meat. The sauce was rich and flavorful, but lacked anything remarkable past a simple carbonara sauce. The biggest disappointment in my dish was how the majority of "meat" was mostly chewy fat bits, perhaps an attempt to save on money.
The "spicy chicken" was bland and lived up to the stereotype that "white people don't season their food", a stereotype I've often found to be untrue, but this dish definitely proved it correct. I'm not sure if "spicy" was a mistranslation, but this chicken was about as spicy as Iggy Azalea-- no, less. It tasted like it wasn't even seasoned with salt, let alone any spice. It was bland, boring, and felt like something you'd eat for $4 from a supermarket that had been cooking it all day in a rotisserie. Dry, boring, bland. Blegh!
This restaurant had potential, but its current status is nothing more than a cheap bite for uninspiring dishes that'll make you wish you were elsewhere. read more