Caffeteria Antica Roma - Rome - TravBuddy

You are totally right, we paid 7.50 for each cone. The cashier (tall woman with dark brown hair)said we had eaten 7.50 worth and had to pay that amount. We argued with her, because there was a sign "2.50 each per cone", but she said our cones were bigger than this size. I think she has different measurements for tourists and romans. We had similar experiences with other places in Rome and we will never go back to this country. After that we were in Barcelona. This town was cleaner and the people were nicer and were correct in money matters etc. We were in Italy in 1984 and they cheated us back then also. We were in the area of the Garda lake.

Resumee: Don't go under no circumstandes to this place. Sorry, but historic places AND people count! Try to find a Asteria to eat they usually are family owned and may not cheat you as easy.

If you are at the Spanish Steps, and feel like an ice cream. Under NO circumstances should you go to this place. We paid 9.80Euro for EACH gelati we had. That is, we paid 30E for 3 small gelatis.

It's the most expensice icecream i've ever had.

9Euro of that was just for the shit seats we had. My mum stood there arguing with them for 10 minutes but no one in the shop would even talk to us and all pretended to not know what they should actually cost. Meanwhile the gelati was melting and wasnt even that good. We had much better elsewhere in Rome and much much cheaper too....

I had to join this site just to agree with all of you. This place is a ridiculous rip off - and the owner was arrogant, rude and totally obnoxious.

Fool us once.....

I think we need to spread the word around though to avoid this place like the PLAGUe.

I've done posting on other sites - maybe we could all do the same.

This is absolutely ridiculous how they rip off North Americans.


Traveller from Montreal, Canada

After the Spanish Steps, it was time for some ice cream. We were about to encounter the single defining moment of the trip.

Let me paint the picture. It was hot.  It was crowded (hundreds of people were milling about in the general area of the Spanish Steps). It was afternoon. It was time for food. I suggested pizza or gelato. Marla said whichever we found first worked for her.

We soon came across a small sidewalk shop that sold soft drinks, water, and gelato. The name was Caffetteria Antica Roma. Thinking back to how fast our 6 Euros worth of gelato (Italian ice cream) had disappeared the day before, I decided to move up to an ice cream cone a little bit larger.  I picked the cone in the red rectangle (see picture).

The young man not only gave us each three scoops of ice cream, he put some colored decorations and little flags on top for good measure. How pretty! That was definitely the fanciest ice cream cone I had ever seen.

As Marla and Sam hungrily devoured their gelatos, I walked over to another part of the store to pay. I stood behind four customers waiting to pay. Some old guy was slowly but surely collecting the money. I had not been given a bill or a price. I had no idea what the cones cost.

This was a pretty loose operation. There were no doors and it was very crowded. The three of us could have walked away and no one would have known a thing. It also occurred to me that if I wanted to pay for one cone instead of three no one would have ever known the difference.

Considering how poor I was feeling, I experienced a moment of weakness. Fortunately after a brief contest between good and evil, my conscience won. I was reminded that Kahlil Gibran had once said it is much easier to be a moral person when you have money in your pocket.

Now it's my turn. The old guy looks at me and asks how many. Three. Without even looking up he says "36 Euros". I practically died from shock!

36 Euros!!! Are you out of you mind! Suddenly the Twilight Zone music started playing in my brain again. I was in shock.

As I clung to my money, I did some rapid calculations. How could 6 Euros of Gelato yesterday suddenly multiply to 36 Euros today? I had surely not increased the size of my ice cream by a factor of 6. There must be a mistake. 36 Euros = $72. Who on earth charges $72 for three ice cream cones!?! My entire dinner last night for three people complete with wine had come to 42 Euros. How can this guy get away with charging so much for ice cream?

He stared at me and I stared back at him in silence. It was so quiet he might have been able to hear the Twilight Zone music playing in my brain. Did I remember to set my ears on mute?

I tried to protest only to realize he didn't speak English! He only could speak in Euros. How do you argue with someone in another language? Just then two cops walked by outside. One word from this guy and I am sure the polizia strolling down the piazza would have flattened me like a pizza. So I begrudgingly handed over my precious Euros and shed huge secret crocodile tears inside. How would I ever be able to enjoy my ice cream cone knowing my deep-seated Puritan sense of thrift had just been ripped into ugly bloody shreds?

Marla wasn't very sympathetic which didn't help much. First she insinuated how stupid I was for not asking the price ahead of time. Then she pointed out the cost was listed. As the clouds of depression set in, I dully scanned the price list. There were prices for over a dozen different sizes of cones. And yes, one of them said 12 Euros.

But as I stared at the different sizes of cones on the shelf above, how was I supposed to know which cone size correlated with which price?  I thought that was a pretty good argument on my part.  Why hadn't they put a picture next to the price?

Marla pointed out I had selected the largest cone size in the display.  But her argument didn't make any sense. There were several sizes larger on the menu as well as smaller sizes.  I even saw cones listed that cost 25 Euros! Then it dawned on me that maybe the confusion was deliberate. Hmm. It worked.

As the Twilight Zone music started playing in my head again, I was reminded of a very old saying in Latin.  Caveat Emptor… beware the buyer.  I had just fallen into la crème de la crème of Roman tourist traps, the great Gelato shakedown!

As I realized what a fool I had been, what should have been a happy moment instead turned to Dark Depression. It takes a complete moron to spend 25% of his last remaining cash on 3 ice cream cones.

I had not felt this poor since I was a struggling grad student waiting in the food stamp line forty years ago.

This place is evil. My boyfriend ordered a gelato in the smallest, plainest looking cone and when he went to pay they charged him 7.50 euros. I was sure there was a mistake because I had just been to the place about 3 weeks before with a friend and I am sure we did not pay over 3.50 euros for our gelato.
There were also people with giant cones, elaborately decorated with wafers and stacked with scoops...now I cant imagine those people paying 30 euros for their ice cream.

After he paid, I asked the lady at the cash register if it was 7.50 euros for just ONE small cone of gelato and she rudely said she didn't know and the man serving the gelato tells her the price.

I went back to the man who served us the gelato and asked him the same question and he pretended he did not speak English even though he did less than a minute ago when he served us. At first I was confused so I repeated myself and asked him again and he started speaking Italian really fast (which my friend and I could understand) and he said arrogantly "Speak Italian, I don't know English, speak Italian!!! Italian only!" So my friend asked in Italian if the cone my boyfriend had was 7.50 and she pointed at the sign that clearly said 2.50 euros for a small cone of gelato. The man pretended to not understand her Italian and started yelling at her in Italian and then he waved his hands at us in a shooing and degrading motion telling us to leave. This whole time we were being polite, but I got upset at this and told him I had been here before and I didnt pay 7.50, and I said the sign says 2.50. He started to mimic me mockingly, making faces and continued waving us away.

I don't think it would be so bad paying 7.50 euros for a tiny ice cream if they had not been so rude and avoided the question.

***Also, the gelato is really bad. It melts too fast and is way too sweet. When I had my gelato there, I couldn't even finish half of it because it was too sweet and constantly melted on my hands so I threw it out.
I would recommend it to people who like sugar, but it is so sweet you can barely distinguish the flavor you ordered. However, a much cheaper alternative would be buying a bag of sugar and eating out of it.