Food ︎︎︎︎︎

Service ︎︎︎

Location ︎︎︎

I was so excited to try this restaurant after hearing great reviews from friends and seeing it on my feed a couple of times. Retrobottega is right in the heart of Adam’s Morgan on 18th street. It is a great location and even on a rainy Monday the street was bustling with people and I saw a friend walk by who I haven’t seen in a couple of years. Retrobottega is a cute little Italian restaurant that serves many pasta dishes. I know that this sounds like my dream restaurant, but I was thoroughly disappointed.

The service and the food did not meet my expectations whatsoever. Upon sitting down we had two servers, which is fine if two people want to help out, but they were asking us the same questions and wasting our time. The server that ended up helping us for the rest of the meal was quite awkward. I don’t want to be rude, but it was probably his first week there. When giving us our small plates and water glasses, he just slid them down the table barely reaching my friends next to me. I was also on my phone (looking at the menu) and he hit my hand with my plate and didn’t say anything. Eventually our servers took our drink orders. I got their signature Gin & Tonic which was actually good and it was served in a pretty glass.

The only thing that I actually enjoyed from their menu was their fried mozzarella balls. It was just a fancier version of a mozzarella stick.

For dinner I got the Short-Rib Pasta. The meat was quite dry and the pasta sauce was basically water. If you go here do not get this dish. It was not flavorful. We weren’t even offered Parmesan for our pasta! My friend got some goat cheese pesto pasta thing. It honestly tasted like pasta mixed with cream cheese. I didn’t really like it but she did. Contact me if you want to ask her about her thoughts.

As we were eating our main course our waiter gave us a second set of utensils (we were already eating with our first set of utensils). He gave all of us a new set wrapped in a napkin. I didn’t understand the point of this considering that we were already eating, and he even placed one of the new sets on a dirty plate that had sauce on it. Very weird.

During our meal our waiter asked how our meal was. We all responded “great, thank you.” Then he just stood there and it was super awkward. Usually they say something like, “I’m glad!” Or “Is there anything else I can get you?” “Would you like another drink?” Nope, he just looked at us. Luckily my other friend wanted a third glass of wine so she asked for that and broke the silence.

After I force-fed myself to finish my $26 pasta we were handed the check by our waiter.

Why didn’t he ask us if we wanted dessert? How dare he! We weren’t going to order anything anyway, but we are totally the kind of people to see the menu out of curiosity and then not order anything.

Truthfully a negative experience but I do think I’ll go back. I want to try more of their appetizers and our other server who was helping us at first was really funny and nice.