The restaurant in question is called Villa di Roma, it's located in South Philly, and if you're reading this and are ever in the city of Philadelphia about to die of starvation even then, even in such dire circumstances where it's a life-or-death situation please dear gods make this place the last place you'd go to.
The only positive thing I can say about the location is this: it seemed 'authentic', in the sense it reminded me of going to medium-rage Nepali restaurants in late 2000's, and I imagine the ambience of the place reflects real-life restaurant conditions in lower-income parts of Italy. So if you want to get the lower-middle-class Italian person experience of going to a place where they don't give no fuck, this is the place to go. This is, to remind you, the best compliment I can give to this place.
Why do I not like the place?
The ambience. If we were paying five bucks an appetizer, ten for an entree I wouldn't complain, this is what this would be. The prices were twice that, so expectations were higher. Which brings me to the second point: the price. It's absurdly priced for the lower-tier place it intends to become.
Second, the effort put in. I'll come to the quality of food later on, but it's so clearly nobody really gives a crap about what goes into the patrons' mouth-hole, or the whole experience. I don't pretend that minimum-wage employees at fast-food drivethru's do either, but at least somebody does in the chain, there at least a couple of hundred people worrying about what's it's going to taste like, what your experience inside their establishment is going to be, etcetera. Billions of dollars are spent on researching and improving these experiences every year. Nobody in this places gives a crap. They don't care about how you feel, how you like the food, what you think about the place. There is zero, and I want to stress this, ZERO, fucks given here. Go only if you are a masochist of a certain type.
The food was extremely mediocre, that's the third reason, so shockingly awfully mediocre. Perhaps my standards have rose because of the Italian place close to our apartment back in Mefferd, but this was one of the most disappointing Italian places I've been to. N's sister VD basically didn't eat any of her mushroom pasta. "I make food better than this on a bad day," she said.
The hygiene was questionable. We found hair strands on everybody's plates. Who's hair? Why, why why.
When asked for 'cheese for the pasta', they gave us a shaken jar of powdered white crap. I don't want to be too harsh but. Ugh. I do better than that on a bad day, people.
We learned a lesson: where to not go for Italian food in Philly.
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