Il Giardino di Albino Antica Trattoria

The place was great and the waiter was both efficient and entertaining. This guy appeared to truly enjoy his job. For only the second time in my life, I had to reject a bottle of wine. I knew we were in trouble when I saw how easily the cork came out of the bottle but the waiter had, of couse, seen (and felt) it too so there was no trouble at all. For our first course, Lin and I shared a nice Penne Arrabiata that was great. She had veal in white wine that she liked and I had a great Veal Marsala. For desert we shared a cheesecake much as you’d get in NY.

Physically, the restaurant is very pleasant though certainly not elegant. This is what the Italian’s refer to as a “family restaurant” but it’s a far cry from the chains we call family restaurants here.

A great find.

Amazing atmosphere, awesome waiters, tasty food, good music, lots of laughs... I would do it all over again, everyday I was in Rome!

The waiter asked us if we would like to try the "house appetizer" so my 2 friends and I said,"sure".... this is not an appetizer...it's a freaken MEAL! About 10 euros per person, but totally worth it and totally what I expected an Italian meal to be! They served us a basket of Salami, several different kinds of fresh cheese (I loved the Mozzarella), several dishes of fried vegetables, meatballs, and more...every time they came over with another dish my eyes would get bigger and I would wonder when it was going to end...but I loved it! I took in the whole experience! There was music playing in the backround and people singing along...the waiters almost danced around the restaurant to get to your table! It was great!
After the appetizers (meal) I was not even hungry, but our waiter convinced us to share the house pastas!...good lord... 3 HUGE dishes, more like pots, for us to share. If I recall correctly there was one pasta with white sauce, one with red (almost spicy) sauce, and raviolis... we could barely finish and our waiter said we can't leave that all on our plates...so we stuffed our faces with more, sang, and drank wine (which I actually liked this time) to get it all down. By this time we were ready to take a nap from all the food we just ate...until....
Our waiter came back to our table and asked us if we would now like meat or fish! We were confused for a second and looked at eachother like...did he just say second course?... YES HE DID... at that point we refused, we couldn't handle it, we would've exploded...so we graciously declined the second course.
....but, who could leave without dessert?! (and expresso for my friend)... so we had vanilla & chocolate gelato of course! A perfect ending to a wonderful meal!
When I was in Italy I was not fully impressed by the food, but when we found this place we realized were were just going to the wrong restaurants!
If you are in Rome...I recommend this place 100%, you'll love it! I'm drooling just thinking about it... :) The price for 3 of us was just over 100 euros, which I don't think is so bad once in a while!