Roman Cuisine

About Roman Cuisine

By the ULTIMATE Rome Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

What to order in Rome, from the bakery counter to the trattoria and the market stall, and where to taste it: our guide to the dishes that define the city.

Roman cuisine

Roman cooking is the food of a frugal, confident city: few ingredients, handled with complete assurance. It belongs to the trattoria rather than the grand dining room, to a paper-covered table and a carafe of white wine from the Castelli Romani, and it follows the calendar closely, so that the same menu reads differently in March and in November.

The four pastas

Rome’s great pasta dishes share one pantry. Pecorino romano, the sharp sheep’s cheese of Lazio, and black pepper make cacio e pepe, emulsified with a little of the pasta water into a cream that clings to every strand. Add guanciale, cured pork cheek crisped in its own fat, and you have gricia. Tomato turns gricia into amatriciana, named after the town of Amatrice in the hills north-east of the city; beaten egg yolk instead of tomato makes carbonara. Cream has no place in any of them.

Four pastas, one pantry: pecorino romano, black pepper and guanciale make the whole family.

Spaghetti, tonnarelli and rigatoni are the usual shapes, and every trattoria has its own view on which suits which sauce. Order one each and share.

Artichokes, two ways

From late winter into spring the city is in thrall to the carciofo romanesco, the round, thornless artichoke of Lazio. Carciofi alla romana are braised with mint, garlic and olive oil until they are soft enough to cut with a fork. Carciofi alla giudia, from the kitchens of the Jewish Ghetto, are pressed open and deep-fried twice until the leaves turn crisp and bronze, like a flower: eat them leaf by leaf, with your fingers, and finish with the tender heart.

The quinto quarto

Testaccio grew up around the city’s slaughterhouse, and its cooks made a cuisine from the “fifth quarter”, the offal and tail left once the four quarters of the carcass had been sold. Coda alla vaccinara, oxtail braised slowly with tomato and celery, is the classic; trippa alla romana, tripe with tomato, mint and pecorino, is the other. They are the dishes that tell you most about the city’s kitchens.

Beyond offal, look for saltimbocca, veal with prosciutto and sage, and abbacchio, the milk-fed spring lamb of Lazio, roasted or grilled.

Supplì and pizza bianca

Rome eats well on its feet. A supplì is a croquette of rice cooked in tomato sauce with a heart of mozzarella, breadcrumbed and fried: pull it apart and the cheese stretches like a telephone cord, which is why Romans call it supplì al telefono. Pizza bianca, flat, oiled and salted, comes warm from the bakers’ ovens in the morning, sold by weight and often split and filled with mortadella. Pizza al taglio, by the slice, is sold the same way.

Something sweet

In a Roman bar, breakfast is a cappuccino and a cornetto taken standing at the counter. The maritozzo, a soft sweet bun split and filled with whipped cream, is Rome’s own. In the afternoon, a cone of gelato.

Where to taste it

For the four pastas and the Roman classics: Armando al Pantheon, run by the same family since 1961; Roscioli near the Campo de’ Fiori; La Ciambella, for chef Francesca Ciucci’s meat and offal dishes; Taverna Trilussa in Trastevere; and the Bib Gourmand trattorias of the 2026 MICHELIN Guide, among them L’Osteria della Trippa, Trattoria Pennestri, Domenico dal 1968 and Hosteria Grappolo d’Oro. For pizza bianca, Antico Forno Roscioli in the morning; for cheese, cured meats and supplì to take away, Volpetti and the stalls of the Mercato di Testaccio.

Our advice: eat by the season. Order artichokes from February to April, and save the long Sunday lunch of pasta, abbacchio and a bottle of Frascati for a trattoria booked a day or two ahead.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Roman Cuisine before you go.