Tea Time: Taverna Romana in Rome, Italy

If anyone tries to tell you that there are no decent restaurants near the Colosseum, don't believe them. Taverna Romana is at most a 10 minute walk from the big tourist site. (I'm not by any means knocking the Colosseum, it was one of my favorite places in Rome, and I will hopefully post about it at some point this month. That being said, it IS ridiculously swamped with tourists at any given time of day).
But, on to Taverna Romana. I did a quick search for good restaurants the morning of our Colosseum visit, and Taverna Romana popped up as having consistently fair home-style pasta and meat dishes. So we made a beeline for it around 12:30. Taverna Romana is a fairly small restaurant, so I'm glad we got there early-ish, as it filled up quickly and the staff were turning people away (mostly Italians) by the time we were halfway through our lunch.
Service was pretty good; one waitress was very speedy while the other one....not so much. Nobody spoke a ton of English but we didn't have a problem ordering or getting our questions answered. Seeing as I'm not really a big meat eater, we decided to forgo the lamb and beef choices. We instead ordered the spaghetti alle vongole (spaghetti with clams), spaghetti alle carbonara (not my choice), and a side of meatballs for Keila. The meatballs were decent but overpriced in my opinion--something like 8 euros and not a very big plate, either. Adding to the insult, of course Keila decided to turn her nose up at them and only ate noodles. Sigh.
The vongole was quite good but not the best I've ever had. Food in Florence has apparently spoiled me for life. I didn't have more than a bite of the carbonara but it was ok: too cheesy for my liking, but not awful. The noodles were quite good in both pasta dishes, however. Basically, imagine authentic homestyle Roman cooking, and you'll get Taverna Romana. As I said...not the absolute best ever, but pretty darn decent if you like food from Mom's kitchen.
Finally, dessert was tiramisu. I was disappointed in it unfortunately. We were so indifferent to it that I don't think we even finished the one bowl we were splitting. Meh.
Overall score for Taverna Romana: 6.5 or 7 out of 10. If you're in the area, it's worth heading to. Especially if you want to experience an authentic Roman family-style restaurant. Just don't bother with the tiramisu.

Taverna Romana
Via della Madonna dei Monti, 79, 00184
Rome, Italy