Rome Restaurants: Reviews & Recommendations

[Kevin72]

I also don't mean to suggest we want only formal restaurants.  We'd like to get a flavor too for the wine bar and the trattoria.

It might be nice to eat one night in Trastevere, since I'm told it's a romantic place to walk around in at night.  But I also understand it to be full of touristy bad restaurants.  True?  Asinocotto is highly recommended in my outdated Gambero Rosso.  Any opinions?

How about in Testaccio?  I want to go to Volpetti out there.  Is the scene still "happening" at night?  Any suggestions? 

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My experience is limited to the trattoria scene but I'll comment as best I can:

We really loved Trastevere and saw none of the touristy element that guidebooks commonly complain about. In fact we had it almost all to ourselves. Granted this was early March and it was pretty cold out, but we loved it. I saw probably 5 interesting places in addition to where we ate (da Lucia) which while pretty good was probably the lowest-ranked of the 3 trattorie we ate at. I'm of the opinion that you can "spot" a touristy place based on the menu, particularly if it's translated in 4 different languages, and these places all had interested, true Roman dishes on their menu, so I think you'd have good luck in Trastevere and maybe this should be your trattoria night.

Didn't get to Testaccio, another Rome regret, but it gave me the impression that it was much like Trastevere with lots of good, honest trattoria food there. And of course Testaccio has Cecchino (Checchino?), a famous "quinto quarto" ristorante. I'd be curious to see what opinions on eGullet are: I'm amazed at the wealth of restaurants mentioned here that I don't run across anywhere else.

[SethG]

Hey, is this all you guys have for me? I hoped for more. Does anyone have an answer on the subject of whether it makes sense to make reservations from the U.S.?

Anybody have an opinion about:

Agata e Romeo

Antico Arco

Al Ceppo

l'Ortica

Il Simposio?

Thanks for the replies so far.

[Kevin72]

We didn't have a problem with not making reservations, but we went much earlier in the year, sans tourists and the whole Pope issue. From my experience, it's kind of a pain to try to work the reservation angle from the U.S., what with coordinating their hours with your time and catching them still open but not busy. Plus of course the language barrier. Maybe make a reservation for your first night and then have your hotel take care of the rest for you when you get there, unless there's a few "must" destinations you really, really want to get to. Also see if they have email or fax (unlikely but you never know).

[vigna]

Amost all restaurants in Italy have fax connections. In the past few weeks, I've used fax to make reservations for an upcoming trip to Italy in June. I got quick responses from Il Convivio, Quattro Passi, Alle Testiere, Il Postale (Cittá di Castello). Only La Caravella (Amalfi) has thus far not replied. I also used websites to reserve at Don Alfonso and San Dominico, and got quick positive replies. I did write in Italian, which might have helped, but as Il Convivio, Don Alfonso, and San Dominico responded in English, I would guess that an English request would have been equally good (and also indicates that my Italian leaves something to be desired!). I've been using fax for making reservations in leading European restaurants for several years, and it works well.

[Kevin72]

Time to backpedal: the "unlikely" part was more in reference to email addresses, and not that they wouldn't have the capability to have fax and/or emails.

[MMerrill]

Re: restaurant reservations in Italy, look at this site: internetrestaurant.it. We've used them several times with great success. However I don't know whether they list any of the restaurants you are interested in.

[SethG]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've submitted reservation requests for two restaurants (La Rosetta and Agata e Romeo) through the Internet Restaurant site.

[SethG]

Thanks for the suggestions.  I've submitted reservation requests for two restaurants (La Rosetta and Agata e Romeo) through the Internet Restaurant site.

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I take back what I said above. I've yet to receive any response whatsoever to my reservation requests through the Internet Restaurant site. I was supposed to hear something within 48 to 72 hours, and it's now been over 5 days (or 120 hours). I guess I'll send some faxes in the morning.

Edited April 25, 2005 by SethG (log)

[MMerrill]

Wow, too bad! We've always (used them 3 or 4 times) had great service from them. Did you try contacting them a second time?

[Kevin72]

I thought there was some burrata on sale in the US mentioned in the cooking forum before. Or was it imported?  A great cheeese and ingredient, I actually heard someone is making gelato di burrata before. I'll try to find out who it was. Just thinking about the burrata, ricotta and pecorino filled ravioli I had at dal Pescatore makes me hungry...

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No you're right, it is made in New York I believe. But that might as well be in Puglia from here (Dallas), particularly since it's so perishable. Dallas does have the Mozarella Company, which gained quite a bit of fame in culinary circles for a while, so maybe I can drop a bug in their ear, hmm . . .

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Well, I want royalties. Guess what I saw at Central Market today? And from Mozarella Co., no less?

Didn't buy it: my wife's going out of town this week and me alone in the house with a one-pound ball of cream-filled cheese is not a good idea.

[ecr]

Just came across this thread -- next trip to Italy will definately include Puglia, my kind of food.

Burata (sp?) --- there IS an Italian guy in California making it, and he does mail-order. It was written up in Saveur a year or two (or three) ago. The article should be on the website, if not I might be able to dig it up.

Article begins something like this: "It's so creamy!" a chef friend said. It sounds like it's the real deal (not that I've ever eaten the real deal).

[SethG]

Wow, too bad!  We've always (used them 3 or 4 times) had great service from them.    Did you try contacting them a second time?

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I don't have that kind of time, unfortunately. I'm making a flurry of phone calls and sending a phalanx of faxes.

[albiston]

... Dallas does have the Mozarella Company, which gained quite a bit of fame in culinary circles for a while, so maybe I can drop a bug in their ear, hmm . . .

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Well, I want royalties. Guess what I saw at Central Market today? And from Mozarella Co., no less?

Didn't buy it: my wife's going out of town this week and me alone in the house with a one-pound ball of cream-filled cheese is not a good idea.

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I thought you knew that there's people reading every word you tip here on eGullet, with us being trend setters and all that. It either makes you feel really cool or completely paranoi .

I don't think you can get royalties, neither did the guy who invented Burrata in the 1920's in Puglia. I would try to get a free sample though. Maybe you should try asking for a donation owed to you as cheese muse.

[SethG]

I just returned from Rome and my wife and I made use of many of the recommendations here with generally very good results. We also made use of a few other sources, mostly the Gambero Rosso guide, translated into English in 1999 and I believe not updated since. We also used the May 2005 Bon Appetit feature on Rome and a NY Times feature on Rome from March 2004 that is still available on their website.

We were in Rome for only four days, but we managed to eat a lot! I'd say we left feeling a little disappointed. The restaurants we tried on the upper end did not really impress us. We found the center of Rome and Trastevere to be full of very touristy trattorias-- it is very very easy in Rome to get yourself an indifferent pasta and a terrible espresso; much easier than I remember it being in Florence six years ago when we were there. That being said, however, we did have some very good food and some amazing coffee and gelato.

Restaurants:

We ate in only two real restaurants during our stay: La Rosetta (near the Pantheon) and Asinocotto (in Trastevere). La Rosetta has been mentioned here many times, and I felt like we had to try it. We found, contrary to some reports here, that the grand raw seafood appetizer was neither a particularly large nor particularly moving presentation. It really was just an appetizer. And for 55 Euros for each of us, it ought to have been a lot more impressive. The mains were even more steep, and the wine we ordered (we discovered later) was marked up two and a half times the retail price. I thought the fish was all well (although simply) prepared and impeccably fresh, but when I think of what we spent on this meal and what we could get for the price in New York-- either at a very high end French or Italian restaurant, or at a very good Sushi place-- I want to cry. Perhaps it isn't fair to compare La Rosetta to restaurants in New York, but it is my own frame of reference, and the comparison is pretty devastating in my opinion.

Asinocotto was a much more modest restaurant, both in its level of formality and its prices. I haven't seen any buzz about it here at eGullet, but the place was recommended in the NYTimes article last year, and my outdated Gambero Rosso gave the restaurant a best value award, dubbing it a "gourmet haven" where "you really eat well." We didn't have any complaints about the place, but again something about the restaurant didn't really move us. The decor is rather fussy, aiming for whimsy but ending up a little depressing. Every single table was filled with tourists the night we visited. The dishes were a little hit or miss but we generally approved. My wife had a cheese ravioli in a pumpkin sauce in which the sauce, which really was almost a soup, overwhelmed the ravioli. But I loved my wide noodles with a duck ragu. My wife's steak was very good, but I found my rack of lamb overcooked and accompanied by a boring clump of barely cooked carrots. I don't think we'd go back, not just because we weren't wowed by the restaurant; we also found Trastevere to be a tourist sink-hole.

After these two experiences we cancelled our reservation at Agata e Romeo. We decided we didn't want to remember Rome by its disappointing formal restaurants.

Trattorias:

I'd say we had better luck with trattorias. Right after we arrived we got a quick bite at Matricianella, at 3/4 Via dei Leone, which the recent Bon Appetit describes as "the trattoria of your dreams." I ordered a homemade tagliatelle special, which had a sauce based I think on parsley and very small pieces of fish. I'd tell you more about it but the dish wasn't translated on the menu and I don't speak Italian. Anyway, it was lovely: fresh, light, suffused with a hint of the flavor of the fish. I thought it was unusual (although for all I know it's a classic) and it set a high standard that was never repeated during our trip. I had no other homemade pasta this good. My wife's gnocci with parmesan was also great, and we had a generous plate of incredibly tender prosciutto and fresh mozz.

Ditirambo, near Campo de Fiori at 74/75 Piazza della Cancelleria, was more mixed. They had the best pasta with cheese and pepper that we had on our trip. Large cheese ravioli were thick-skinned and tough, however. Nice salads.

We had a fun experience at Monserrato, also near Campo de Fiori at 96 via Monserrato. (This is really a restaurant, but we had more of a trattoria experience there.) It was May 1, a big holiday and a Sunday to boot, and lots of places were closed. We had already had some indifferent food at a wine bar and were walking around the area when we saw that Monseratto, which has a bunch of tables out on a quiet square, was packed with locals who seemed to be having a very good time. We decided to wait out a table, which took a while, and once they seated us I started pointing at the plates we'd seen. Many of the people who'd been there had received (what I gather from the Gamberro Rosso guide to be) baked turbot with scalloped potatoes. When we tried to get it, the waiter went inside and found someone who spoke English to tell us that it was too late for them to make any more of that dish. But we did get some delicious swordfish carpaccio, artichoke ravioli, and pasta with clams. And a bottle of Falanghina. And had a splendid time on a beautiful afternoon.

Our favorite trattoria was our last, Agustarello in Testaccio, 100 via G. Branca. We ventured out to Testaccio on our last night, and it was everything we'd wished that Trastevere might have been: authentic, traditional, still populated by locals. At Agustarello, I had a wonderful plate of gnocci in a mutton sauce and a huge portion of braised oxtail, in a wonderfully thick, gelatinous reduced sauce. There were tourists at one other table but otherwise the place was full of locals. And more of them kept coming and being turned away once the place was full. It is a small restaurant, and there's not much in the way of decor. But man, what good honest food. Lots of offal too, if you go for that.

In Testaccio we also had a very good experience at Volpetti, where we bought cheese and a few different prosciuttos to eat during our plane ride home, and at a wine bar/beer hall called the museum of beer (or something like that) on the east side of Testaccio square. The street level floor has a wine shop and wine bar, and then downstairs is a raucous beer hall with a loud jukebox, full of locals living it up on a Monday night.

Gelato: the usual. Il Gelato Di San Crispino is amazing. I loved the honey gelato, and the armagnac gelato too. For a more traditional place I liked Giolitti. I also tried the famous tartufo at Tre Scalini in Piazza Novona. It was rich and chocolatey, but nothing to write home about. And I had a truly miserable espresso there.

Espresso: the usual. We really loved Sant’Eustachio.

Pizza: We managed to try Da Bafetto, and I wasn’t impressed, I’m sorry to say. Maybe we were there too early, but I felt my pie was undercooked. Not much char underneath, and the crust had a decidedly floury, raw taste to me. The sauce also lacked seasoning, in my opinion. Not bad, though. We considered stopping for a quick pie at Remo in Testaccio on our way to Agustarella, but the pies looked about the same as Da Bafetto’s so we gave it a pass.

Like many posters here at eGullet, we very much enjoyed the pizza bianca from Antico Forno Marco Roscioli, at 34 via dei Chiavari. It's a great snack on which to munch as you walk about.

One other wine bar: Always popular, right in the center, but Cul De Sac is a really nice place. It must take a special dedication to quality to have a place just steps from Piazza Navona and not have it suck. We had a wonderful cheese plate and some delicious, spicy soppressata. And wine, of course.

Thanks for the suggestions we got from this thread, and I hope this report might be useful to someone else.

Edited May 4, 2005 by SethG (log)

[albiston]

For all those interest, I would suggest you give a look at Seth's comments to his Roman experience, which have been moved here.

[Andrew Fenton]

In a little less than three months, I'll be moving to Rome. It'll only be for a year, so I want to make sure I use that time efficiently, food-wise and otherwise.

One of the perks of my job there is that most of my meals will be covered: five days a week, I'll be eating excellent home-style cooking prepared by little old Italian ladies. But on weekends, I'm on my own. I'll have a kitchen; nothing fancy, but I'll be able to take advantage of the great produce over there (in the past, I've just gazed longingly).

I'd love to hear any advice anybody can give me about what I shouldn't miss over the course of the year. Restaurant advice is fine (especially inexpensive restaurants: I'm getting paid in dollars, not euros), but there are already a couple of threads for that. I'd especially love to hear about food shopping in Rome: where are the best markets, for cheese or wine or fish or whatever? What food-related festivals should I be on the lookout for? What should I read in advance? In general, what should I be sure not to miss?

Any advice, pointers, or general information would, of course, be very appreciated. Hook me up!

[divina]

Do you know where you will be living?

Neighborhoods count a lot!

one of the largest and best markets I found when doing some research was Mercato Trionfale via Andrea Doria, not in the touristy center likd Campo Dei Fiori, which it tiny in comparision.

I haven't visited Trastevere yet.. but here it is nice too!

you wil have to come to Florence one Saturday too.. to see out fabulous market!

it is only 1 1/2 hours away.. come walk around tour eat.. shop and then hop on hte train with your goodies!

The market opens at 7am and closes at 2pm. I have done the same the other way!

[giovanni]

Check out Alan Epstein's website www.astheromansdo.com. Alan is an ex-pat American who has lived in Rome with his family for +/- 10 years now. The website includes a lot of great information for anyone visiting or planning an extended stay in Rome. Also, be sure to read his book "As The Romans Do." It's definitely worthwhile.

[Andrew Fenton]

Do you know where you will be living?

Neighborhoods count a lot!

True, I should have mentioned that. I'll be living in Monteverde Vecchio, just up the hill from Trastevere and near the Villa Doria Pamphili. I know that there are is a small market in the neighborhood; if the Trastevere market is really good, it shouldn't be too far away. I'll definitely come up to Florence as well!

Giovanni, thanks for the website recommendation; it looks like there's some really good stuff there.

[tanabutler]

Can I please come with you? Fanx.

[BouchonIntern]

I am moving there on July 11th. Luckily I will will be working. But only for room and board. I also plan on spending about a year, so I have to live very wisely. Please don't mind if I piggyback this post with you as we are in the same boat.

Ian Winscom

http://thetravelingchef.typepad.com

[kellytree]

Rome and efficency in the same sentence???

For markets and things to see or do info you should check out http://www.slowtalk.com/ --

Other sites that may have helpful info -

communities.msn.com/expatsinItaly

http://www.straughan.com/italy/index.html (subscribe to the newsletter - its always informative with a great sense of humor)

http://www.expatsinitaly.com/

[divina]

If you get to Florence.. contact me!!!

I adopt young chefs!

[shadow]

We will be in Rome in September. Of course we want to eat well, but our budget this time is limited. I have read the Rome thread, but was wondering if anyone had specific suggestions for restaurants that are inexpensive but quite good. Thanks!

[DaleJ]

Pizza is, of course, the solution. My favorite is Pizzaria Remo in Testaccio. Take the Metro to Piramide, walk west on via Marmorata past Volpetti and turn left into Testaccio. Ask anyone for directions since its a neighborhood institution. Prepare for a wait if you want ot dine outdoors.