restaurants in rome
hurl-free
guide to finding a
restaurant in rome - skip
intro
choose
from:
pizza
indian
chinese
burgers
tourist menu
cucino romano
or click here instead for information on bars, the tiny street cafés of Italy.
Romebuddy is not really a foodie. We wouldn't
know a Tuscany Shrimp from a Sushi Sausage, and let's face it, twenty-four
hours after you've eaten some fine gastronomic meal, you'll be flushing
it down the toilet, so why wait an hour to be served something that's
only gonna take you twenty minutes to eat? If you're a tourist here on
a tight itinerary, you'll have better things to do with your time.
Sightseeing makes you hungry. Tourism, or trying to settle into a strange country can also be stressful and disquieting, so 'comfort food' can play a very big part in helping you recover from another hard and sweaty day in the ruins of Old Rome.
After living in Rome for five years, we've decided that what's most important here is good standards of service, fast delivery times, and plain solid tasty meals with ingredients we can recognise.
Here then is Romebuddy's simple, straight to the point guide to restaurants in Rome that'll help you unwind and take on body nutrition with the least amount of fuss in this extremely fussy and furious city.
On the whole, Italian food is good, it's tasty, satisfying, and they give you plenty of it, and although the service is often a little slow, and the customer toilets out back are often slightly disgusting, the service generally comes with a smile, and you don't have to dress up for a Rome restaurant like Lord and Lady Muck - Waiters and proprietors of restaurants here are usually cheerful, down to earth people who just want to see you go home filled and happy. So try to just get out there and enjoy Italian cooking.
Listed below
are Romebuddy's personal favourites. I don't accept any responsibility
or liability for what you may experience in any of these establishments,
I'm not gonna guarantee anything, and everybody's tastebuds are different,
but I simply say that I've eaten at all these places with no complaints,
and I haven't hurled afterwards.
So - you wanna restaurant?
For pizza, check out:
Bella
Napoli
Via Alessandria 13
00198 Roma
Tel 06 854 2966
I already knew that pizza was an Italian invention, but what an ignoramus such as me didn't know until I lived in Italy was that the actual birthplace of the pizza in Italy is Naples, (or 'Napoli' as the Italians spell it). Thus, Bella Napoli pizza restaurant, is not just aptly named, it's actually a real traditional family-owned restaurant run by a mother and her sons from Naples. But if you think from that, that it's some tiny little rustic half-assed operation, you'd be wrong - The gang at Bella Napoli have really got their act together -
Not only is it a popular haunt with local Roman Italians, they're also in tune with what tourists want - Their premises are large with plenty of seating, yet the place also retains a cosy, casual atmosphere, and they also have sidewalk tables. Menus are printed (or explained) in English and they even have a choice of thin'n'crispy pizzas, or deep pan, though Italian deep pan is nowhere as deep as American deep pan. Anyway, when in Rome, you really should make a point of trying the authentic thin and crispy pizzas, they're much healthier, and you can taste the fresh and subtle Italian topping flavours much better.
Bella Napoli pizza restaurant (the Italian word for a pizza joint is 'pizzeria' - pronounced 'peets-air-rear' - No, don't be cruel, it doesn't really rhyme with diarrhea...) is a stone's throw from the British Embassy, just on the north side of central Rome.
A word of advice - I'd been going to Bella Napoli for a while before I realised that the woman I thought was a waitress was in fact the owner. What does that tell you? It tells you that many Italians are hard-working, self-effacing, sincere, polite people who don't put on airs and graces of grandeur. When you visit Bella Napoli to eat, it's more like visiting this woman's home. There is none of the snooty professional distance of, say, a French restaurant, or the pretentiousness of fake Italian restaurants you may find at home. Bella Napoli is the real thing, so be careful and considerate how you treat staff in any Italian restaurant, because they may turn out to be the proprietor.
Tired
of pizza?
For something completely different, try:
Ar
Grottino der Traslocatore
Largo Delle Sette Chiese 2
00145 Roma
Tel 06 514 1261
Nearest subway stop,
Garbatella, on the Linea B
This is the kind of restaurant that as soon as you step in the door and look around, you'll want to say "Honey, let's go someplace else..."
But if you do that, you'll miss a rare and unique treat. Ar Grottino der Traslocatino, in appearance, lives up to it's name - It looks grotty and run down, more like seedy truckstop, or a soup-kitchen run out of a subterranean bomb-shelter - And it's tiny - There's only room for about forty people in the whole place, sitting elbow to elbow. But it's actually perfectly clean, and the food is superb.
Really, this place is for food-fans only, and you'll need to know some Italian. There isn't really a menu as such, they look like they're sort of making it up as they go along, it's all very laid back.
Because it's so small, there isn't room for the waiters to get around the table properly, so they just dump a pile of cutlery silverware on end of your table and you lay out your place settings yourself. But this is real home-made 'cucino romano' Roman cooking, like-a-mama-used-a-to-make-a.
Don't get me wrong
- They're not deliberately trying to be rustic and rough-handed just for
laughs - This is not a novelty restaurant. It's simply that they cook
real food for Romans in a quiet corner of the city, and
they've got more talent in the kitchen than space in the dining area.
This place is not for the faint of heart - it's for experienced tourists
only, but try it anyway (phone first or you will never get a seat) and
it'll be a dining experience you'll never forget. Just go for it, okay?
Chinese? Try:
La
Pace
Via Madonna Dei Monte 53
00184 Roma
Tel 06 488 0346
Typical Chinese restaurant, all the usual familiar items on the menu, very centrally located in busy, picturesque, atmospheric Roman street, close to all the main action.
Y'all know about Chinese food, it's a good reliable standby, and just about your only alternative if you're getting tired of Italian food after a few days in Rome. What more can I say? - except that the staff in La Pace, although Chinese, speak Italian, an interesting combination, I always feel. They're closed Mondays, though so are a lot of restaurants and stores in Rome, so wherever you eat in Rome, phone ahead of time, preferably the day before, to check opening hours and reservations.
For a specifically tourist oriented restaurant, with pizzas and also a much wider selection of dishes, click on:
Taverna Parione
Via di Parione 38
00186 Roma
Telephone 06 686 9545
Just off Piazza Navona, in the fabulous old west central area of the
city. We've eaten there and it's great. They specialise in what's known
as 'Romano' cooking, ie, it's authentic, traditional Roman 'cuisine',
but they are also nicely set up to do pizzas.
Plenty of room, menu items translated into English, and a small army
of speedy, helpful staff. Taverna Parione understands the needs of foreign
tourists. For more details and sample menus, click their link above.
Indian...
We mentioned above that Chinese is your only alternative to Italian cooking in Rome. Actually, that's not strictly true. Around the corner from La Pace Chinese restaurant, (although I forget its name), there's an Indian restaurant on Via Dei Serpenti (Snake Street, aptly named). The Indian restaurant industry in Italy is not as well developed as in say, England.
In Italy, Indian restaurants are expensive, presented as rare, exotic upmarket haunts for rare and exotic clientele. Italians think that having a curry is frightfully daring. So don't expect to get good value here for Indian food. Italians by and large cannot handle really hot curry, so the cheap and cheerful, simple but effective beer and vindaloo meals so familiar in England are not as easily found in Rome.
Burger and be damned...
Some
Italian restaurants do make an attempt at putting hamburger on the menu,
but hey, what's the point? It would be like eating spaghetti made by
Russians. Although it's true that in fact most chefs in Rome's restaurants
are not even Italian anymore - (They're actually Egyptian or Filipino,
because the current generation of Italians look down their noses at
the low pay of kitchen staff), even so, you're unlikely to find an authentic
American burger anywhere in Rome. So do yourself a favour and try to
stick to Italian cooking in Italy. Unless, that is, you're absolutely
desperate, in which case,
there's always McDonalds!
McDonalds have about twenty joints all around town now. They first opened here about fifteen years ago with a place in Piazza Di Spagna. At that time Rome city council was very suspicious of the whole idea, so they specified to McDonalds that they had to build a restaurant which was in character with the historical architecture and culture of the area, both inside and out.
McDonalds responded by building the most bizarre McD's restaurant you'll ever see - The facade is very low key, not the familiar red and yellow corporate colors, but gold lettering on dark grey marble, so it's difficult to spot at first. Inside, you'll find mock-marble replica fountains, real terra-cotta brickwork, fresco murals, salad bars and displays of fresh fruit in wooden barrows similar to those in Campo dei Fiori.
Other branches added later around other districts of Rome are more conventional in appearance. Although there's now a McDonalds in every far-flung suburb of Rome, the main locations you'll need as a tourist in the central Rome area are at:
Piazza
Di Spagna
Via del Corso
Piazza Barberini
Via Nazionale
Piazza della Repubblica
Piazza della Rotonda (opposite the Pantheon)
Piazza Sidney Sonnino (in Trastevere)
(tell 'em Sid sent ya!)
There's also one at the beach at Ostia Lido.
That concludes Romebuddy's gastronomic tour of Rome for now. Let us know if you find anyplace else that's good value for money, as we in the free democratic west would define that term.
Happy pigging...
