All Forks Lead to Rome

“Cacio e pepe, please!” After reading the menu from start to finish, gazing upon dishes whose names flow like poetry, my index finger stops on one of the most traditional Roman pastas, made with Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper. Yet this particular preparation is the brainchild of a Michelin-starred chef, Fabio Ciervo, executive chef of Terrazza restaurant on the sixth floor of the Hotel Eden, one of Rome’s most luxurious five-star hotels. Ciervo made cacio e pepe his signature dish by implementing small adjustments to elevate this emblematic pasta to haute cuisine. An elegant soup bowl arrives laid with a swirl of spaghetti studded with black pepper grains and flower petals. I begin to savor it with my eyes, and pick up my fork...wait a second! There’s one more step: the maître d’ places a water-and-rose-filled flask in front of me and begins pouring liquid nitrogen into my dish, which transforms into a fragrant cloud that floods the plate. Only at that point may I dig in and taste the surprising assembly that dazzles the eyes, stirs your sense of smell and then conquers the palate: al dente pasta, creamy Pecorino, Madagascar pepper and the scent of roses.

This is a really wonderful evolution, but one that respects the integrity of a traditional cacio e pepe. With any dish, traditional or not, Ciervo follows five rules: innovation, quality ingredients, taste, art and healthfulness. He takes the last rule so seriously that he took himself to university to study nutrition, in order to ensure that every recipe he produces is health-conscious and that his menus are balanced and light overall. “Appetizers, pre-desserts and desserts — no dish has more than 800 calories,” says the chef, a former rings athlete who kicks off his day with an hour of exercise at 6 a.m. He takes the same approach when preparing a pizza or mixing rejuvenating shots of wheatgrass, ginger, turmeric and black pepper for breakfast in the huge kitchen, visible from one of Terrazza’s windows. The other, larger windows look over the city of Rome itself, its colorful palazzi, its embassies and its cupolas which span the centuries.

In Rome, history exists simultaneously: the Imperial Forums, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Tiber, St. Peter ’s Basilica, the colossal monument dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II. Then there is the glamour of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and the intrigue of La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 Oscar-winning film that showcases the Eternal City at its most exquisite. Rome identifies with its cinematic titles and has touted them with pride for decades — no state of disrepair could ever tarnish them. They inspire travelers, prompting a treasure hunt for monuments and small secrets, like Borromini’s “false perspective” in the 17th-century Palazzo Spada, the (anything but) spiritual ecstasy of St. Teresa sculpted by Bernini in the Church of Santa Maria delle Vittorie, and the two Caravaggio masterpieces in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo — all on display for anyone to admire. The same goes for the cuisine. Lamb, pajata (intestines of a milk-fed calf), puntarelle, cabbage and artichokes are staples of the local markets, as well as the cafés of Trastevere and the Jewish Roman Ghetto. Mind you, as with dining in any major city, travelers should keep in mind that it’s important to choose wisely.

According to many connoisseurs, chef Marcello Romano’s amatriciana is the best. The pasta is undoubtedly enhanced by the purple velvet surroundings, ancient bookshelves and the elegant gilding of Salone Eva at the Hotel Hassler, the celebrated five-star hotel perched on the Trinità dei Monti vantage point overlooking the iconic Spanish Steps. The resident chef Marcello Romano focuses his attention on regional dishes.

At the hotel’s ground-floor bistro, Romano prepared these as rigorously as haute cuisine, coupling ingredients of indisputable quality with deft technique. “This is the only way you can revisit a traditional recipe, without incurring fierce disapproval,” he asserts. “I don’t want people to be intimidated by the luxurious surroundings. Come in, I tell them, order your favorite pasta, seasonal soup, frittata with artichokes, or fried zucchini flowers, without worrying about unrecognizable ingredients or an exorbitant bill. I am certain that our amatriciana, with its little secrets, will please both novices and connoisseurs alike.” This does not mean that the menu offerings are limited to the canon of Roman cuisine.

As a matter of fact, Rome welcomes Zuma’s contemporary Japanese cooking at Palazzo Fendi, and Pacifico’s Peruvian ceviche at Palazzo Dama. The former opened in 2016 and the latter, two years ago, and both restaurants have piqued the interest of not only the guests staying at the fine hotels in which they are located ,but also Romans themselves. Indeed, it’s the locals who are learning to love sushi at izakaya pubs and neo-Andean cuisine, such as the raw fish seasoned with Latin-American accents by lauded Peruvian chef Jaime Pesaque. Pesaque has restaurants in his native Lima as well as establishments around the world in cities such as Miami, New York, Oslo and Milan.

Tradition — front and center

Rome’s street food traditions run deep, and instead of grabbing just anything to eat on the road, opt for local street food like a slice of pizza at pizzaiolo Gabriele Bonci’s world-famous Pizzarium, located near the Vatican, or his namesake shop, Bonci, at Mercato Centrale just outside Stazione Termini. While you’re there, try a tasty trapizzino: a small triangle of pizza bread stuffed with de- lightful versions of Roman preparations, such as coda alla vaccinara, trippa alla romana, meatballs and more. 

There’s no street food quite as emblematic of Rome as supplì, fried croquettes stuffed with rice and tomato sauce. At Supplizio, chef Arcangelo Dandini’s beloved street food joint, you can find several iterations of this treat, from the traditional tomato and rice the old-school way — with chicken gizzards and mozzarella — to classic Roman sauces such as carbonara with egg yolk, guanciale and cheese, and amatriciana. 

If you can draw a conclusion about Roman cuisine, it’s how seamlessly it can adapt from old methods to new. Neither great chefs nor promising young cooks would ever dare proscribe its archetypal flavors, but rather, they try to make them more contemporary. But always with a balance, seeking cleaner and lighter sensations.

Marco Martini, whose restaurant at the greenhouse-style hotel, The Corner holds a Michelin star, offers rigatoni with a velvety reduction of oxtail alla vaccinara, a traditional Roman stew, plated to resemble a sculpture that you can enjoy with your eyes closed. Martini’s monkfish alla cacciatora, meanwhile, is a take on a traditional chicken preparation in which the bird is glazed in its cooking broth and garnished with a crisp nub of its own skin. He replaces the chicken with Monkfish, composing the dish to resemble a millefeuille, or millefoglie, but with a different consistency and taste, sitting atop a bed of tapioca pearls and covered with wafers made from Taggiasca olives.

High quality, no formality

Roman cuisine is always a topic of debate. Some want to add more international perspectives, while others want to focus more on health. Some turn tradition into a metaphor while others have a strong stance on fine dining. “Enough with the formality,” say chefs Alessandro Miocchi and Giuseppe Lo Iudice, who left Il Pagliaccio, a Relais & Châteaux restaurant, after two-year-
plus stints with chef Anthony Genovese and opened Retrobottega. Alessandro claims that pretentious cuisine alienates people from restaurants. People are deterred by ritual: menus that look like “tables of the law,” excessive presentations and astronomical checks. “We want our dishes to be original, attractive and prepared with technique and excellent ingredients, at prices in line with other restaurants in the historic city center,” he says. Retrobottega is, in fact, teeming with good ideas. Everything revolves around the open kitchen, which is flanked by a
counter topped with drawers stocked with tableware: table cloths, flatware and glasses. The menu of the day is written on a blackboard and the cooks bustle around assembling a dish under the watchful eyes of the diners. Today it’s grilled onion ravioli with raw prawns doused in a prawn-reduction broth topped with charcoal-grilled onion crumble. 

Pianostrada is a restaurant that aims to stay faithful to its definition of a “cooking laboratory” as envisioned by owner Paola Colucci. A few years ago, she grew tired of working in finance, so she quit her job to create something of her own. Her daughters Flaminia and Alice work alongside her in the small restaurant, a cheerful place where colorful salads and tartares come together and artichokes alla giudia, a deep-fried preparation that originated in Rome’s Jewish community, are plentiful. Sour cherry pies have a delicious pasta frolla, or Italian shortcrust, base whose sweetness is offset by a touch of tartness from the cherries. The kitchen is on display here, too, and diners can chat with the cooks, ask questions and make special requests while their meal is prepared in front of them.

Goodbye, old-fashioned gastronomy

Everyone knows that food is not eaten with the mouth alone but also with the eyes and nose. And if those two senses don’t give it a pass, it’s not going to pass muster with the palate. Nice furnishings, theatrical lights and refined settings are the essential complement to an agreeable lunch or dinner in Rome’s historic center, where the present is intertwined with the past. This line of continuity is what makes Rome eternal — its flavors are no exception. Historic food stores, groceries and delicatessens never die but they do change a bit over time. Stores like Beppe e i suoi formaggi, Secondo Tradizione, which makes the best fried food in town, and Roscioli Salumeria con Cucina, where you eat between the rows of sausages displayed in the windows and the shelves displaying wine and preserves, have all added a menu and some tables, so that now you can eat where not long ago people shopped to stock their home pantries.