I will start by saying that we have NOT dined at this restaurant, at least not in its current incarnation.
I discovered Er Marchese because I have an interest in the specific location near Piazza Navona, and check it from time to time to see who is in business there. This new place (since 2022?) has a great website, a nice menu, with a pop-up saying they have gluten-free options on request, and it gets uniformly good reviews on Tripadvisor. Although those reviews are a little “too good”—- they have suddenly risen to #89 of 9,024 restaurants in Rome. Yesterday they were 119. It is an all bit odd.
This is not to be confused with Osteria Il Marchese, which apparently attracts celebrities, and is located somewhere else. Er Marchese’s address is Via di Sant’Agnese in Agone 21 in Rome.
My interest in the location arises from our experience in 2015 when we stopped here for lunch. The restaurant was then named La Fraschetta. We were walking from the Vatican to the Pantheon, and while we do not usually just pick a place as we walk by, this one looked decent. There was only one empty table outside, a chalkboard menu all in Italian, and no “greeter” standing around trying to entice people in. So we sat down.
I won’t go into great detail about everything that happened, other than to say we were cheated—-the waiter refused to bring us the proper change from the 50€ note my husband handed him for payment, shorting us by 7€. He also failed to provide an itemized bill or a receipt. We asked him to itemize the charges, which I had calculated came to 23€ for the food, before the water (which was not priced on the menu). He added 5€ for the small bottle of water, bringing the total to 28€. But the change he brought us from the 50 was only 15€. We asked about the remaining 7 € and he claimed it was “tax”. I pointed out there is no food tax in Rome, and no “coperta” or service fee stated on the menu, so what was the 7 euro? He shrugged and said “OK, call it my salary.” We demanded the extra 7 euro and a receipt, and he went inside and closed the door.
After waiting for 10 minutes, we stood up, and he still did not come out, although other diners were waiting for their food, and giving us curious looks. So we left, and warned off other prospective clients who were checking out the chalkboard menu.
Back at our hotel I checked Tripadvisor and found a string of negative reviews reporting the same experience: being charged a “tax” on their bill, and/or being denied a receipt. So I wrote a scathing review of my own, then went on the TA Italy forum to ask the locals what to do. They said report them to the finance police, and gave me the proper email address in Rome. I did, and was contacted by the authorities asking for a formal, notarized statement and other details. I sent in our statement and copies of the TA reviews. I never heard back from them and gave it no further thought other than to check the reviews from time to time. They continued to be bad. . . And then in 2018, 2.5 years after our visit, the notice popped up “Permanently closed”.
But before long they re-opened under a new name, something like “Antica Locanda di Roma” but I do not remember exactly and cannot find any mention of its existence. I do remember they were still up to their old tricks—-the place continued to draw negative reviews for cheating on the bill. And then the Antica Locanda, or whatever it was, disappeared as well.
I cannot tell when Er Marchese actually opened at this location as the reviews only go back to 2023. But there are none that suggest any relation between this and the former scummy restaurants at this location. I am hoping that is true, and they succeed. However, their meteoric rise to #89 in all of Rome makes me a bit suspicious.
If anyone is curious and would like to try them out, I would love to see a report here.