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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best available in English, March 19, 2003
The Gabero Rosso guides are legendary in Italy. Serious Italian food and wine lovers will rarely try something new without a recommendation from a friend, and often that friend is the Gambero Rosso guide. And I, along with many of my friends, won't travel through the countryside without a copy of the Gambero Rosso restaurant guide -- that way when we get hungry, we can quickly locate a great place to eat, call ahead and find ourselves sitting down before tasty meal very quickly and easily.The problem for the causal tourist has always been that the Gambero Rosso restaurant guides are not published in English. Now there is at least this book. While the Rome guide obviously lacks the vastness of the national editions, it is the best available English-language resource for anyone in the Eternal City looking to find a great meal at a restaurant that isn't already listed in every other guide book. Granted, this book suffers from some of the shortcomings of the Gambero Rosso series as a whole: it generally doesn't reward restaurants that do something out of the ordinary, no matter how good, and the growing sector of ethnic and fusion restaurants in the capital are ignored. One might even criticize the choice of Rome for Gambero Rosso's first English-language restaurant guide, since Florence, Bologna and Genoa all have culinary traditions superior to that of Rome (no doubt Rome's 30 million tourists a year were the deciding factor there). But for any ex-pat living in Rome or any English-speaking visitor who wants some solid advice on where to eat his or her tripa or tagliateli, this is the book you want.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When in Rome..., December 29, 2002
By A Customer
This is the guide that native Romans use when deciding where to eat someplace new. We have traveled to Rome extensively over the past 3 years and have established friendships with Romans. We were touring Ostia Antica with two of these friends (nothing like native guides <VBG>) when after several hours we decided "enough ruins! Lets get down to the serious stuff - where to eat?" We whipped our Gambero Rosso out of the back pack just as they reached for their glove box. After sharing a good laugh we compared the translation to the original Italian. The current english edition is 2 years old. Restaurant pricing has gone up significantly with the introduction of the euro. Do not take the English version's word for prices today. Some locations have closed including (sniff) Vanni one of the premier pasticcerias in Rome. The guide works on a scoring system of food, wine list, service and ambiance. Our friends consider any Gambero Rosso score over 70 a "go". The guide tends to give extra points for places with strong wine lists. Each establishment reviewed has a description of what Gambero Rosso considers its weaknesses and strong points. I've never had a bad meal at a Gambero Rosso restaurant and have had some stunningly good meals at locations with mid-range scores. If you are an Italian vintages oenophile this is a great book. If you like good eating while traveling in a foreign country - consider this your bible. In no way, shape or form should you consider the guide complete (with thousands of restaurants how could it be? Especially a 2-year-old English-language version) but it is definitely a great guide for someone who doesn't have the services of local friends.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
OK, but some problems, May 7, 2004
By A Customer
I used this book on a recent trip to Rome. While I found the book fairly useful, and have no major disagreements with the other reviewers, I have two major problems with it:1. It is 5 years old. While the release date is shown as 2000, the copyright is 1999, meaning the data was probably collected in 1998-9. I found that some restaurants no longer existed (after spending a long time trying to find them). As we all know, a lot can change in 5 years. 2. I found the book very difficult to use. There are no maps. I would have liked to use the book for answering the question "What restaurants are near to where I am right now?" While there is a section listing the restaurants by area, it requires a lot of cross-checking with the reviews, and the names of the areas did not always correspond with the names on my map. Once I found a restaurant that sounded promising, it always took some time to find it on my map (look up street on the map index, find street, determine how close it was to where I was. Repeat for next restaurant). I think that this book would be great for someone living in Rome (or there for an extended period) who is familiar with the areas and streets of Rome. However, for the casual visitor who is there for a few days, the difficulty of using it out-weigh the benefits. (...) Again, for someone living in Rome and familiar with it, the Russo book would be great.(...)
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