Porta Romana Ristorante-Pizzeria

Good place, great drinks ready. buen lugar, excelentes bebidas preparadas.

Excelente servicio y sabor delicioso.

Sabor delicioso

The best Italian restaurant in tampico

We were surprised this restaurant is rated 3rd of Tampico’s best. We hesitated to enter because the outside did not look the way we expected, but never the less gave it a try. We were welcomed by the chef that was incredibly friendly and nice. The place was empty for a Saturday afternoon, but we sat. Once on our table we noticed run down and torn wallpapers, not good for a restaurant interiorThe chef brought us the menu and said they had a buffet and being this our first time we decided to take a look. The buffet was on a separate room that smelled incredible. They had trout, chicken, osso bucco, lasagne, spinach cannelloni, and macaroni, vegetables, salad and potato cream. The chef suggested we had a taste of the buffet because that way we could try different dishes, and we agreed because everything smelled amazing. She first brought us the fresh lettuce and carrot salad and a bread basket and we were surprised she was bringing our dishes, so that was a change from regular buffet arrangements. Then she brought us plates with very item on the buffet. That was quite overwhelming because the plates were full of food, not a nice presentation, would have been better small plates with separate items especially because we were the only clients.The food is home cooked style, nothing fancy or pretentious, the osso bucco was the best of the dishes offered. Then she brought us the “flan”, sadly I have to say it lacked the creamy consistency a flan should have, not to mention the flavor.We can understand this may be in the first three places because for $150 Mexican pesos ($11 USD) per person customers can leave well stuffed, but being around a while and having visited other restaurants in Tampico, we must say that yes, this place has a friendly cook and the food is average, but not outstanding as to receive a 3rd place.