Alfredo of Rome of NY

Lasagna tasted burnt. Tables were very cramped together. Service was extremely slow. It took almost 30 minutes to get our drinks, including water. It took 1.5 hours to get our food. The scallops were really good though. We heard others complain about the slow service. High price for what you get.

Went there for dinner, food is definitely pricey but its good. The fettuccine alfredo is excellent. We also had some pizza, it was thin crust and very tasty.
Pasta fagioli and polenta are also good. Highly recommend this place.

CLOSED DOWN — -Update to my review: This restaurant is CLOSED — There were two signs; one was from the marshalls that ceased the restaurant, and the other stating they were moving. As of now it will no longer be at this location.

Best fettucini alfredo I’ve had with the six cheeses or whatever, but pretty pricey. I guess that comes with the territory when you eat the original.

Event: Easter Sunday late lunch for 2
Pros:
–Extremely large capacity
–Very visible from street
–Capable staff
Cons:
–Very over-​sauced/​fairly oily food, particularly fish
–Tourist trap, (probably due to proximity to Rockerfeller)
–Very late lunch but had to wait 15mins with no reservation
Sum: When in Rome. if you’ve got nowhere better to go

Dated décor, food and service combined with being way overpriced = 1 star review.
Hate to do it, but I need to be honest. I was dragged here for a client lunch. There weren’t tumbleweeds, but it was pretty dead which is odd for any midtown spot on a Thursday afternoon. The most comical thing was the hostess asking if we had a reservation. Does it matter? All but 3 tables were empty.
The service was polite, but far from friendly. Pretty straightforward, and as soon as our waiter realized we were not ordering wine we dropped way down on his list of priorities.
The menu was eye-​popping. I know the name on the door is «Alfredo», but seriously…$ 28 for Fettuccine Alfredo? I better see someone’s Italian grandmother in the kitchen making my order from scratch for that price. Don’t forget this is lunch, not dinner. It became clear that there is no difference between lunch and dinner menus or prices. $ 18 was the cheapest thing on the menu. The prix fixe was $ 45! Unreal.
The food preparation was just very old fashioned and dated as was the presentation and service. All in all I got knocked for almost $ 200 for a mediocre, gut busting lunch that sent me back to the office needing a nap… and an explanation to my project’s finance guy.

Super pricey, right off the bat. We ate here before a tour of NBC Studios because it’s right across the street and hadn’t realized how expensive it was until we sat down. For sure the most expensive lunch I’ve ever had.
Four of us had fettucini, lasagna, and veal parmesan. My lasagna was fairly good. Not the best I’ve ever had, but certainly very good. My dad loved his veal and said it was super flavorful. My fettucini eating friends were in HEAVEN, though. Both said it was the best they ever had. They were practically licking their plates clean. Four stars for that.

godiva liquor was good
zucchini was ok
pricey in general

I learned my lesson. I had planned on heading out to pick up some snack items for my hotel room, then check Unilocal and
to figure out what to eat,
Unfortunately, I had a hard time finding the store I was looking for (probably because it’s no longer there) and got cold and hungry. In a fit of frozen-​ear stupor, I decided to just go and eat something. NOW. Yeah. Not gonna do that again!
I know it’s hard to find a restaurant in a prime tourist location that will have outstanding food. I know the fact it’s in a prime tourist location means the prices will be notably higher than they should be. However — to have decent at best food AND outlandish prices means the place SHOULD have reasonable service.
Okay — so I am dining alone. That means the check will be roughly half what the server would get if I had a companion. Guess what? Shouldn’t effing matter! Money is money, and I have a habit of overtipping if warranted.
I ordered a glass of prosecco, an «ancient Roman» artichoke appetizer and a Margherita pizza.
The prosecco was fine — but the $ 11 per glass was at least $ 3 higher than it should have been, based on quality.
The artichokes were quite good — but should have been paired with something more subtle than the raddichio salad they came with. Given how mild the chokes were, the raddichio was incredibly sharp and overpowering. Oh, and in a tasteless dressing. For the $ 16(!) I would have expected more than 6 artichoke heart halves.
The pizza was impressive on sight. About 18″ long oval, served on a thick wood board. Too bad the crust was tasteless, the cheese boring and not enough basil to cover ¹⁄₃ of the pieces. This would not have been okay at half the price of $ 18. Hopefully a night in the fridge will at least bring out some flavor in the sauce and make for a decent breakfast.
Given the locations of Alfredo of Rome are Rome, NYC and friggen DISNEY WORLD — I should have known better.
Well played, Unilocal.From now on, I will ask you first!

Whenever I’m in the Rockefeller Center area, this is the restaurant that my mother likes to drag me into. I adore Italian food. Alfredo of Rome, sorry but I do not adore your food.
For a well-​located, touristy spot, I can understand the menu’s high price. I didn’t care for the service — I thought the maitre d’ and our waiter were pretentious and borderline rude especially when the restaurant was mostly empty. Service was also slow.
We shared the calamari, which was good. I ordered their signature dish, the fettucine alfredo. Meh. Didn’t care for it at all. I thought it was too dry and the sauce too overpowering.
But since my mother clearly adores your food, I will probably have to keep coming back.

Finding good food around Rockefeller Center is tough, and Alfredo is merely good food. I might have given it a four-​star, except the prices are too outlandish for the size and quantity of entrée.
Alfredo has a contemporary urban vibe to the décor, and the place is clean and well maintained. But it feels more like a place for the throngs of tourists nearby than for people in search of a satisfying meal or experience. Service was brusque.
The food was fine but not good enough to match the high prices. I ordered a salad with filet. It was smallish and while the filet was tasty, the 4 ounces hardly matched the $ 20+ price. One of our party ordered a pizzalike dish that wasn’t bad – very thin crust with good, fresh ingredients, but it, too, was very expensive.

Alfredo’s you slay me with your tomato, mozzarella salad and your fettuccine alfredo!
OK, let me slow my roll a bit, I’m in NYC once every two months or so to have lunch/​dinner, catch a show, eat REAL pizza, nosh on some black and whites (New Yorker’s know what I’m talking about… holla!) and mainly to kick back to my roots out in Queens, on this particular occasion I was meeting a girl… ooooooooo a girl… Ok, my ex girlfriend who has me now placed permanently in the friend-​zone (It’s like nookie-​zone… sans nookie… crap…
Anyway, she scored some tix to Zartana the new cirque show at RadioCity… The show was meh… after the show it was mandatory to go to rock plaza and play point out the tourists:
Midwest = 5pts.
NJ = 1 pt
California = 3 pts
Outside US =4 pts
Amish/​Mennonite = 50 pts
Staten Island = ½ pt (too easy with the big hair and all)…(guess where my ex is from)
So after playing we ended up at Alfredos, one of the reasons I wanted to go here is because it has the original statues from the movie Gladiator here and suppose to have some of the best fettuccine in the city… both were true!
We started off splitting a caprese salad, the mozzarella was house made (no polly-​o here) and it was a fine sampling of red and green tomatoes. next onto the main course, she had a Tagliolini al Pesto, basically it’s homemade pasta in a pesto sauce with shrimp, sun dried tomatoes… looked good, looked healthy, not for me. I had the Fettuccine Alfredo served in a big bowl all curled up looking like a bird nest of pasta and cheezy goodness…
It was Amazing!
Just the right al-​dente on the pasta, the sauce did not weaken the structure of the nest, nor did it overpower the flavor of the pasta… if that makes sense… This was the Schwarzenegger of pastas baby!
For dessert we had something that I can’t remember (I was in a fettuccine coma)
I’m sure it was excellent though!
Also our server John, was GREAT! we were seated in a little corner nook so we could talk and John took great care of us so Thank you for that!
For those who reviewed this place and thought it was just a tourist restaurant because of it’s location I respectfully say D’uH, it’s been around since 1914 before the plaza was built… I may be going out on a limb when I say that Alfredo’s is the reason that all those other places were built so nearby.
If you just want a slice of NY pizza, go down the block and pick up a grandma slice at Bella Napoli’s but if you want really good Italian food with great service go to Alfredo.
~CM

I was invited here by my boyfriend and his family since they were visiting from out of town. The restaurant itself was nice but definitely full of tourists which took away from the «nice, expensive italian place» kind of feel that they were going for.
ok so basically, our waiter was SO annoying. first off he didn’t introduce himself (a dining pet-​peeve of mine) and he was totally rushing us! There was barely anyone there on a early Sunday evening so I just didn’t like how he was trying to rush along dinner from start to finish. He came over 2 or 3 times, after serving us drinks, to attempt to take our order, each time we sent him away saying we were not ready to order yet (we were all chatting and enjoying our cocktails). Finally he came over the last time and we had decided our entrees, and we announced kind of jokingly «alright NOW we are ready!» and he said «ok, i’ll be right back» and he left the table! like, what? he was gone for about 10 min and I finally flagged him down to come back and take our orders… not cool.
I got the chicken caesar salad, others got the chicken, and lasagna. I was so disappointed with my salad, it didn’t look expensive or taste expensive even though it cost over $ 20, i’m pretty sure their menu prices online are incorrect and cheaper than in real life. I got 2 tiny strips of chicken breast on my salad, although wonderfully seasoned, just so THIN! you seriously get more chicken in 2 plain «bar-​food» chicken fingers from some pub than you get in this whole salad. also the 4 croutons in my salad were GROSS. they tasted ok, but they were MUSHY! not soggy, but mushy like they were not cooked all the way through. I was expecting a light, buttery, parmesan-​y crunch and I was greeted with awful texture and ok taste. also, no one ever came around to refill our water glasses throughout the time we were there.
everyone else really enjoyed their meals which made me feel good. I felt bad that my boyfriend’s parents chose this place, but, they were like the rest of the people in that place, tourists! after dinner we sat finishing up our cocktails and our waiter came over and gave us our check before even asking if we wanted a 3^rd round of drinks (which we didn’t, but still). He also kept hovering around our table waiting for us to pay the bill instead of giving us time to digest, chat, and just have a good time.
really don’t see a reason why anyone would want to go here. unless they lower their prices or change some staff members…

This restaurant fit squarely under the category of «places I really wanted to love». The location is spectacular, just a few steps away from Rockefeller Center. The dining room is attractive, albeit a little gaudy with bright red and yellow colors. The gigantic Al Hirschfeld drawings are a great nod to the history of that part of the City and a great way to pass the time looking for «Ninas». I found the service excellent; my water glass was filled the whole night and the server had a great sense of humor.
Sadly, I was definitely underwhelmed by the food itself in relation to the price we paid. In case you’re wondering, yes, this place has a connection to the original restaurant in Rome that invented Fettucine Alfredo. The story goes that the original Alfredo I created the dish for his pregnant wife in 1914, who mixed egg noodles with parmigiano cheese and lots of butter (no cream). Alfredo II opened this restaurant in New York in 1977, and it’s around this time that the dish became ubiquitous.
Of course, we had to order the fettucine alfredo. While I am a history buff and really appreciate the connection, overall I found it a bit underwhelming. It’s a plate of thin noodles, combined with a lot of cheese and a LOT of butter (so much so that when I brought some home, the next morning I opened the fridge and it’s as if an original bar of butter had reconstituted before my eyes). It was extremely salty as well. Perhaps if I were a pregnant woman in 1914 it would have been the bee’s knees. The lasagna and the ravioli were similarly salty and tasted not unlike what comes out of a Chef Boyardee can.
Unlike other Italian restaurants like Carmines, the portion sizes aren’t exactly belly busting. They were wallet-​busting, however: two pasta dishes and a bowl of soup ended up costing us about $ 90 total, with no alcohol, appetizers, or dessert.
Overall, I’d say this was a nice and convenient place for tourists to stop in after admiring the tree and the skating rink. But for a seasoned New York diner, it’s probably worth visiting once for historical reasons but not much afterwards.

The curb appeal is promising. Comfy chairs and bright colors tell you to stop by, relax and have some good Italian food; and for the most part — It’s true.
The restaurant décor is modern
The food is good, not spectacular, but above average.
The service was above average. They took care of us well.
The section we sat in (middle) felt disconnected from the overall restaurant.
If I wasn’t with great company for lunch, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much.
I remember getting the Pollo Al Limone — pan seared free range organic chicken in a lemon & rosemary sauce, roasted potatoes, sautéed spinach. It took a long time for the order to come, but the food was good. The manager noticed that we waiting for a while and personally checked in with the kitchen.
(Apparently, the free range chicken was hard to catch)

We were looking for a spot for dinner before catching the Rockette’s Musical and settled on Alfredo. It had been raining for a couple hours in the city and the first part of the restaurant is a tile floor. Wet people from being in the rain and a tile floor don’t go well together, especially when the ladies wear heels. One of our party fell due to this combination and even though there were several staff around nobody moved an inch, nobody bothered to ask if she was ok, they just watched and went about their business.
We were lead to our table in the back room and our table was right next to the waiter’s station, and when I say right next to I mean literally two foot from the back of my son’s chair. What this meant was the wait staff was constantly bumping into several people in our party.
I didn’t look at the wine menu as my fiancé is the one who is infinitely more knowledgeable about wine. She commented that she wasn’t going to pay $ 20+ for a glass of wine so we all stuck with water.
After looking at the menu I decided to go with the Zuppa Pesca which was around $ 32 and was a lobster bisque with clams, mussels, a jumbo prawn and a couple different fish. I was pretty excited about this but I was also hungry so it was probably not the smartest thing to order. It wasn’t bad, just ok but as other people have mentioned the portion was small so I left still hungry. Seeing I was still hungry I ate some of the pasta my son left. I can honestly say I’ve never had a tomato sauce quite like this. I can only describe it as having a strong citrus flavor, which was not a good thing.
To sum it all up I was excited to give this place a shot, was expecting a good meal and a good experience, received an ok meal and had a sub standard experience. Meh, I’ve experienced better is a bit of an understatement.

Very nice looking place and the help is cool while we were sitting at the bar. My Limonade something with Vodka was hella strong. I wish I was hungry because I really wanted to eat that Porter House some people raved about but I was stuffed.
We strolled in because we were waiting to see if one of the peeps were gonna get Top of the Rock tix. The atmosphere was upbeat and I could have enjoyed it better if maybe we ate there but since it was strictly drinks and mine was so strong it wasn’t enjoyable.

So last night my mom came into the city to meet me for dinner after work. Despite this place looking like a complete tourist trap, we went here any way since it was right near my office and because we heard they had good pizza and drinks.
Well, luck would have it their pizza oven was not in working order. Thus, we both went the salad route. They bring bread to the table along with two dipping sauces (some capers/​pesto deal and a spicy tomato-​esque blend). While I am not one to turn down free bread and will usually view my entire dining experience more favorably when given it, this bread sucked. The crust was hard as hell, and the bread itself had no flavor. The pesto dipping sauce was simply plain awful (fortunately, the tomato blend was marginally better).
While waiting for our salads, we ordered drinks. I don’t know how this is possible, but my vodka soda was even botched. It tasted like Aristocrat with flat soda water. Not cool.
When the salads came, I was again disappointed. Our waiter had raved about the «authentic caeser,» so I got it and was let down. The lettuce was not fresh (turning brown, in fact), and the dressing wasn’t stellar. The only redeeming quality was that the chicken was reasonably well-​herbed and there were anchovies (which I actually do like).
The reason they get two stars is that my mom loved her filet mignon salad. I must admit, it actually looked good.
As for the service, I can’t say that they hit the nail on the head on this one. Our waiter was friendly and funny, but kept dropping the ball. We only got one food menu, and my request for a drink menu took about 15 minutes to fulfill (it’s Friday night… getting me palatable/​timely drinks could have at least gotten you 4 stars!). Wow.
In short, definitely a letdown. I should have known better, but I was near Rockefeller Center and it was a matter of convenience. I wish I had spent my $ 90 on Grimaldis…

Came here for lunch — really delicious food. We ordered drinks and were served a trio of dipping sauces with the fresh bread. There was an olive paste, a spicy red tomato spread and this delicious green pesto/​lemon paste.
The artichoke appetizer with radicchio was really fresh. The artichokes were fried but not burnt and were juicy but dry outside with lemon juice and olive oil. Simple but yummy,
What can I say about the Alfredo Sauce — it was great. The cheese actually tastes like cheese not something coming out of a jar! The half portion was quite filling but I ordered the pasta with olives and Buffalo mozzarella. It was really really nice.
I would definitely go back — but service is not NY pace, the waiters spoke Italian which was great. So it all kind of balanced out.

This place makes The Original Alfredo Sauce the old fashioned way. With Butter and Parmesan only, absolutely No Cream!
Been wanting to go here forever! So I was very excited! We only had an opening for lunch this visit to NYC!
Bread and tapenades were excellent, Capresi Salad was good not great! Veal Was tough, Mashed Potato’s were some of the best I ever had!
Fettuccine Alfredo was amazing, light, very flavorful. I Loved It!
Dessert was amazing Cream Puffs stuffed with Ice Cream and covered in Chocolate, fantastic.
One big downfall to this place it is freezing inside, I was so cold it came very close to ruining the entire experience,
Service and all employees were great!