This was my first trip to Rome, so much of our time was spent sight-seeing. Nevertheless, my girlfriend Leslie and I had time for a number of good meals, with an emphasis more on simplicity than high-end. I culled recommendations from egullet, of course, as well as chowhound and Diane Seed's relatively recent book The Food Lover's Guide to the Gourmet Secrets of Rome. Monday We arrived hungry and late; our hotel (Hotel Exedra, in Piazza della Repubblica) recommended Santa Cristina (Via della Cordonata 21/22), a short walk down Via Nazionale. Quite good, overall: we began with prosciutto with melon, followed with gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce and pasta with minced, toasted zucchini flowers (really good), and ended with a small steak (too chewy) and braised endive and chicory on the side. The service was warm and friendly. Tuesday We had lunch right down the street from Campo dei Fiori at La Locanda del Pellegrino (Via del Pellegrino 107), a nice Calabrian restaurant. Leslie started with mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto from the Silano mountains in Calabria. I had insalate di polpo all'Ischitana (octopus salad with carrots and celery, apparently as served on the island of Ischia). The octopus salad was very good; the prosciutto was as usual, but good. Leslie followed with fileja, a type of traditional Calabrian rolled pasta, with a sauce made from nduja, a very spicy, soft and spreadable sausage from Splinga. I had spaghetti alla beccafico, spaghetti with a smooth sauce made from walnuts, anchovies, garlic, and fennel. Both were excellent, although the spicy sauce was hot enough to bring tears to our eyes. Worth a trip if you're in the area and a little tired of the usual trattoria food. Before dinner, we had a glass of wine at Trimani (Via Cernaia 37b), an excellent wine bar and well worth the visit. Al Chianti (Via Ancona 17) specializes in meat and game. When we wandered in, I think they expected stereotypical Americans since they offered us "Ravioli, spaghetti with tomato?" as soon as we sat down. We brushed that aside and ordered instead boar prosciutto, pasta with hare sauce, and a boar steak, along with white beans and tomato salad. The waiter was charming and seemed genuinely taken by Leslie's wild forays into Italian — so much so that he insisted on bringing her "crema with whiskey" for dessert, basically vanilla gelato with a couple of shots of whisky poured over it. Maybe not a destination, but good, tasty food. Wednesday Exhausted from our tour of the Vatican Museum, we had a straightforward lunch at La Veranda (Borgo S. Spirito 73 in the Hotel Columbus). Unremarkable, but certainly satisfactory and a welcome respite from the papacy. Alberto Ciarla (Piazza San Cosimato 40) served us one of the best dinners we had in Rome, and certainly had the best service. The restaurant focuses on fish, although it also has a "traditional" Roman menu we didn't try. I had the "raw" tasting menu — lightly cured, thinly sliced salmon with equally thinly sliced apples; pasta with chunks of raw fish; tuna tartare; and a green apple granite. Excellent all round (except the tartare, which was a little heavy). Leslie had 6 oysters, black tagliatelle with raw fish, and a delicate raw salmon dish flavored with powdered ginger. It was delicious, simple, and elegant, with professional, thorough and gracious service. Highly recommended. Thursday We stopped at Rosati (Piazza del Popolo 4/5a) for a simple lunch. I had fettuccine with porcini; Leslie had spaghetti all'Amatriciana; both were quite good. Without a reservation, we took a taxi to San Lorenzo, planning to dine at Il Dito e la Luna. On arrival, we discovered that the restaurant at Via dei Sabelli 51 was, instead, Vinosteria. I hadn't planned well enough to know where other promising restaurants were (such as Tram Tram), and the San Lorenzo area, with its bloom of graffiti on every wall, looks sketchy enough at night that we didn't feel comfortable wandering. So we threw caution to the winds and went in, and the winds blew caution right back in our faces. The food was graceless, outsized, labored and not good; the service was perfunctory, if courteous. We left gloomy. Friday Osteria La Carbonara (Via Panisperna 214) just had their 100th anniversary last year and in all that time they haven't learned how to wait tables worth a damn. (It became a joke for us; after asking for il conto — the check — we started on a timer on Leslie's iPhone to see how long it would take; we gave up after 15 minutes.) But the long wait for lunch was redeemed by my pasta cacio e pepe and Leslie's spaghetti alla carbonara — both delectable, savory, and well-balanced. The guanciale of the spaghetti was particularly good, with a distinct, delicate porkiness. My pasta, house-made, was superb. The proprietress, a grizzled, stooped, charmless woman, gave us no quarter when we first arrived: she barked at us in Italian, waved impatiently at a table for two, snapped "no carciofi, no carciofi!" when I pointed to artichokes on the menu, but glowed like a putti when we exclaimed happily "Bene, bene!" after our first few bites. We had a glass of wine before dinner at Al Vino Al Vino (Via dei Serpenti 19), a simple, pleasant wine bar with friendly, easy-going service. At the seafood-specializing Il Tempio di Iside (Via Pietro Verri 11, off Via Labicana), the first half of our meal was overshadowed by a clot of 12 loutish soccer players from China, who drank, shouted and made infuriating merry at a long table across from us. When they finally left, the man behind us clinked his glass with his fork in celebration and would have risen to make a toast had his wife not restrained him. We started with a selection of 5 interesting seafood antipasti (including shrimp stuffed in a zucchini flower, battered and fried), along with raw scampi, split in half lengthwise and opened like a book — similar to ama ebi, with lemon but tasting more strongly of the sea. We followed with half a roast crab on a bed of tomato-sauced spaghetti — very delicious but very messy. I'm not sure if this is typical of the restaurant or if they simply felt we needed fortification after enduring the soccer players, but they placed an unusual three-tiered bottle (a tier of grappa, the next limoncello, and the last probably Fernet Branca) on the table and encouraged us to help ourselves ("It is yours! Try!") That put a nice cap on what began as a trying, clamorous meal. Saturday Cul de Sac (Piazza Pasquino 73) is unpretentious, simple, and good. We needed a sight-seeing break and ended up here since Da Baffeto was closed, and I measure ourselves lucky: wine, cheese and salumi sampler, and unctuous, sweet guanciale. Before dinner, we took a cab to the charming Vinoteca Novecento (Piazza delle Coppelle 47). It's a welcoming, pleasant wine bar set in the busy, people-watching-friendly Piazza delle Coppelle. We really enjoyed it, and I'd highly recommend it if you're in the area for dinner. La Buca di Ripetta (Via di Ripetta 36) was not so good. Somewhere I'd read that they'd changed management — maybe that explains it. The antipasto of smoked duck prosciutto was tasty but served bizarrely with a thump of mashed potatoes. The roast suckling pig had cooled just a little too long and the skin had begun to turn from delicately crispy to sticky and chewy. The "baked baby lamb" — in fact, lamb shank as far as we could tell — was uninteresting and, unfortunately, there was a huge mass of it. The service was bizarrely bipolar. Our first waiter was obsequious to the point of near servility — I half expected him to bow after each pour of wine. At some point through meal, though, he vanished, and a second waiter stepped in, archly informing us while serving our due espressi that "espresso is a strong Italian coffee, not weak like American" and then — snidely? — asking whether we desired milk with our coffee. No, grazie. Sunday Lunch was a quick bite at Il Brillo Parlante (Via della Fontanella 12, near Piazza del Popolo). We had bruschetta, pizza with zucchini flowers and anchovies, and pizza with prosciutto. Straightforward and tasty; no complaints. Dropped by Al Vino Al Vino for a glass of wine, then strolled to dinner. Il Bocconcino (Via Ostilia 23) serves spectacular polpette (meatballs, in this case chicken and veal) scented with celery and cinnamon. Everything else was very good, in particular the lamb we shared as secondo piatto, and the service was courteous and efficient. It's open on Sundays, another plus. Monday La Forchetta d'oro (Via San Martino ai Monti 40) is a simple, very small, no-frills trattoria around the corner from Santa Maria Maggiore. When we arrived, a few Americans were desultorily shoveling down their stereotypical Italian tourist food, so we were somewhat trepidatious. However, there's a nice antipasti buffet, and when we gestured to it, the owner's face lit up like a Roman candle. Over time, more Romans dropped in for lunch, including one charming man who chatted amiably with the owner, scooped up a huge plate of octopus salad, covered it with a second plate, then waltzed down the vicolo.) Everything was good, including the bucatini all'Arrabiata which we shared after the antipasti, and the "fruit cup" — various diced melons marinated in sweet lemon juice. Good for when you're in the neighborhood and want something simple. Before dinner, we dropped in again at Vinoteca Novecento for a glass of wine. Very nice, and the best part of the evening. Il Bacaro (Via degli Spagnoli 27) was a big disappointment. I've seen the restaurant written up as serving "new twists on classic Roman cuisine"; unfortunately, it came across as simply boring. The flavors were simple, uncomplicated, and new perhaps only to children or the super-traditional trattoria set. Admittedly, the combinations sounded interesting: smoked goose carpaccio with peaches, pasta with bottarga and artichokes, Angus beef carpaccio with thinly sliced oranges, for example. Unfortunately, every dish, with the exception of the smoked eel carpaccio (dressed simply with olive oil), was, while pretty on the plate, lifeless and bland. In addition, the service for us was exceptionally poor. Our neighbors (very intimate outdoor seating) had received nearly their entire meal before we'd seen our antipasti. Even they, Italians and frequenters of the restaurant, were surprised at how long it took for us to receive parts of our meal, at one point interceding on our behalf. But ultimately, even if the service had been perfect, the food was not worth the bother. Tuesday By this point, I'd contracted a miserable cold, so we contented ourselves with a picnic lunch in our hotel room, sampling a variety of delicious breads, pizzas, rolls, and tarts from Panella (via Merulana 54), a fantastic bakery. I'd been looking forward to Checchino dal 1887 (Via di Monte Testaccio 30), but, due either to my cold or the stuffy weather, it came across as flat and monochromatic. I had the tasting menu, Leslie à la carte. (It may be a "tasting" menu, but the portions were essentially full sized. It was a lot of food.) Leslie started with two lovely, translucent slices of head cheese, porky and slightly chewy, followed by pasta with oxtail sauce, then saltimbocca. My tasting menu started with insalata di zampi, a warm salad of beans, celery, and veal foot (boned) in a green sauce, the best dish of the set. Two pastas followed: bucatini alla gricia, which was too salty, and rigatoni con pajata — that's lamb intestines, in tomato sauce. Lamb intestines taste nothing like chicken; instead, these were tender, light, and had a slight sausage-y flavor. It made me wonder whether, in fact, they had actually been filled with something other than, I don't know, digested meadow grass. Next, a three-bone oxtail in a dense tomato sauce was paired with spicy sautéed chicory, but the flavors seemed like two single notes, wavering slowly into silence. By this point, I was very, very full. Two small pieces of cheese (one a soft fresh cheese, the other an older, quite salty one) with honey followed, and I wrapped up dinner with a small slice of torta di ricotta. The service was good, courteous, and one of the owners periodically dropped by our table to pour wine or bring grappa — he was gracious and pleasant. In fact, despite my comments, I'd recommend Il Checchino to anyone who loves offal; just look for a little more variation than the tasting menu offers. Finally, as mentioned many places, the gelato from San Crispino (Via della Panetteria 42) is really, really good and granita caffé from Tazzo d'Oro (Via degli Orfani 84) is even better.
