Cave Canem, Rome

Cave Canem serve up a good range of local dishes, but the service, as usual, is an absolute disgrace. The Italian woman whose family own the place is generally helpful, but she has taken to hiring cheap, unskilled labour in recent years, ergo a handful of South American kitchen hands and waiters and a few Bangladeshi guys too. The Peruvian (?) girl who works there as a 'waitress' is the restaurant nightmare from hell none of us want to have to pay for. She is slovenly, dirty, lazy, unresponsive, and for the most part stands at the entrance of the restaurant ***ing and laughing about all the customers sat just yards away, most of whom will tip her. I've lived in Rome for many years and there are so many great restaurants offering good food and fabulous service in Trastevere. The most polite waiters and waitresses in Rome are generally young workers from East Europe or students working part-time shifts. Italian restaurant staff will talk badly about customers, but not overtly; the staff of Cave Canem on the other hand are the absolute worst. Pitiful, embarrassing, rude and disrespectful. Don't go there, you have been warned!

Favorite Dish: It's better next door :-)

5 more images

Cave Canem is a local place in Trastevere and it is amazing! We arrived early in the evening (around 18:00) when the place was dead, but by the time we left at 19:30 it was packed! And it appeared to be almost all locals.

We started with a liter of the house red wine, fried rice balls and a liter of water. This was the best house wine we had while in Rome. The rice balls were delicious. My wife had a prima piatte (first course) pasta dish that consisted of a slightly spicy pasta dish with red marinara sauce. It was the best pasta that she had during our week in Rome. I tasted it and was blown away by its perfect balance of spice and texture.

I had the best pizza of my life. I can't remember its name, but it had black olives, artichokes, ham, mushrooms and to top it off, a sunny side up egg in the middle (see picture below). It was a thin crust pizza as are most pizzas in Rome. It was amazing! I ate every bite! I don't know if I will ever have another pizza that good again.

The total cost of our meal was 31 Euros, which is not bad at all for dinner in Rome and it was worth every penny and more.

Favorite Dish: Everything on the menu looked amazing. My pizza with a cooked egg in the middle was the best pizza of my life. The atmosphere was perfect.