Food: creative Italian and Mediterranean cuisine
Address: Aldrovandi Villa Borghese, Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 15, 00197 Rome, Italy
Phone number: +39 06 321 6126
Website: www.oliverglowig.com
Guide Michelin: 2 stars
What I paid: 271 € (tasting menu, including wine/aperitif, water and coffee/tea)
Visited: November 8, 2014

(Update: this Oliver Glowig restaurant in Rome (Aldrovandi Villa Borghese) is now closed. However, by following the link above, you can check out his other restaurants around the world.)

Chef Oliver Glowig is originally from Germany but still one of the top interpreters of Italian cuisine. Glowig displays a passion for fish- and seafood, as well as typical Roman dishes.

After having been awarded with two Guide Michelin stars on the Island of Capri, Oliver Glowig decided to move to Rome. Oliver once again gained two stars in 2011, just eight months after opening the new restaurant in the Aldrovandi Villa Borghese luxury hotel, located in the heart of the Eternal City, just a few steps away from the city’s most important park, Villa Borghese.

Oliver Glowig has two tasting menus (named after the Chef’s daughters): Aurora for €140 and Gloria for €160. Apart from the menu, you could also go à la Carte.

We opted for the Gloria Menu:

AMUSE-BOUCHES:

Amuse-bouches

It started very good with some excellent amusements, for instance a lovely little hamburger made of wagyu beef and a rice boll (arancini).

Bread

The bread itself wasn’t any special. However, the dip accompanying the bread was excellent and one of my friends attending the dinner just adored it and ordered in a couple of extra bowls…

Amusement

This last amuse-bouche had pike as its main ingredient and I really liked it!

VEGETABLE AND FRUIT
Assorted vegetable and fruit plate with braised tomato

Vegetable and fruit

First “real” dish on the menu and also a very good one!

SCAMPI
Raw with mullet roe, burrata cheese and artichokes heart

Scampi

Beautiful and tasty! I especially remember that I enjoyed the dill escorting the dish (rooted preferences from my origin?).

RAVIOLI
In soup, filled with chestnuts and porcini mushrooms with cauliflowers

Ravioli in soup

This soup was good, but not outstanding.

(RISOTTO – extra dish, not on the menu
With parmesan cheese, parsley and egg yolk and white truffle from Alba)

I did not have the funds to eat more white truffle this trip…. However, one of my friends ordered some from the 8000 € per kg white Alba truffle together with an additional risotto (i.e. an extra dish not on the tasting menu). In hindsight I regret that I did not order a gram or two of the white truffle from Alba to just sample…

SEA BASS
Steamed sea bass with oyster and seaweed jelly flavored with star anise

Sea bass

This fish dish were none of us that happy about. Sure, the sea bass was well prepared but the seaweed jelly that covered the fish was nothing any of us liked. This may be because we have “biased” Scandinavian taste preferences, where usually the fish is often prepared with butter and therefore suppress the pure sea- and fish flavors somewhat. I have previously noticed that I am not keen on this “pure” (in lack of a better word) fish- and sea flavors, when I have had fish in foremost Spain. However, I completely adore the “dedicated” fish- and seafood restaurants like Elkano, Ibai and Rafa’s in Spain, where I don’t have this “problem”, so I am not completely sure what it is I don’t like…

PIGEON
With spring onions cream, shallots and bacon

Pigeon

If it weren’t for the excellent pigeon we had at Reale, two days prior to this dinner, I would say that the one served here were great. Sure, it was very good but the one served at Reale was world class.

PRE-DESSERT
Beer…

Beer…

A very good pre-dessert; a sorbet with a hint of beers.

PERSIMMON
With pomegranate sorbet

Persimmon dessert

Excellent!

PETIT FOURS

Macarons

Cookies

…

A nice array of petit fours finished this pleasant dinner.

In summary:

One of my friends attending the dinner thought the sea bass dish was the only downside of the menu this evening. He further thinks the dinner we had here at Oliver Glowig was better than the one we had the previous evening at La Pergola. Personally, I do not agree, though I thinks La Pergola was better suited for my taste buds and apart from the sea bass I wasn’t that keen on the ravioli soup (it was good but I expected something “more” on a 2-stars restaurant like this). That said, I think the dinner at Oliver Glowig in overall was really good and can’t say it was any specifically difference between this restaurant and some other 3-stars one. Add to this a service that beats most 3-stars restaurants and that Mr Oliver Glowig himself was present during our dinner and also visited our table (which wasn’t the case at neither La Pergola the day before were Mr Heinz Beck was in Tokyo opening his new restaurant or at the 3-star Reale that we visited two days prior where also the head chef seemed “out of office”). Recommended!