the (heavenly) pasta of rome
seriously, go to rome and eat these at least once before you die
Me and Rome, we have a love affair. In fact, it might even be my favourite city in the whole world. I’m not even sure why. This city can be ridiculously crowded, filled with tourist traps and more expensive than other Italian destinations…
but there something about it. The insane history of the Roman empire, boiled down to this place with ancient ruins on every corner, and more seeming to be discovered every year. The energy of excited tourists clamouring to see iconic sites. The grandiosity of monuments like the actually mind boggling Altare della Patria or the Trevi fountain.
Explore early in the day, and you will have a fever dream of time stumbling from one impressive sight to the next.
Oh, and another reason to go to Rome: the food. Bakeries dishing up the best pizza of your lives, breakfasts of densely packed pistachio cornetti with frothy cappuccinos, and traditional pasta dishes you can find all over the world… that simply can’t be done the way the Romans do it.
When I came to Rome I had a craving to sate. That craving was pasta, and Rome specialized in four: carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and gricia. Heavy on the pecorino (sheep’s cheese); heavy on the guanciale (cured pork jowl, think thick cut bacon but way better).
So I’m sure you’ve heard of carbonara. Iconic, and slightly bastardized at home. We throw in butter. We use bacon. Parmesan is more common than pecorino. We (God forbid) may even use a bit of cream. In Italy, a true carbonara is simple, and the other three pastas are more or less different combos of the same ingredients. We got:
Carbonara: pecorino, black pepper, guanciale & egg yolk.
Amatriciana: pecorino, black/red pepper, guanciale, tomato and white wine.
Gricia: pecorino, black pepper and guanciale.
Cacio E Pepe: pecorino & black pepper.
All four were sampled during our stay in Rome, and I definitely have some favourites! I’ll be honest, this isn’t the most fair. Aside from my favourite of the bunch, which I had twice, I had each dish at a different restaurant. So keep in mind there’s a chance I ate a just kind-of good pasta at a given location and comparing it to the best version of another at a different place. Regardless let’s start with the most famous:
Carbonara - Il Maritozzo
Carbonara is one of the most iconic pasta dishes out there that I have yet to try in true Roman form. Rich yolks, salty pecorino and a hint of pepper is emulsified together by guanciale drippings and starchy water to make a velvety sauce. I wanted the best, so I went to a casual restaurant on a quite road in Trestevere.
Il Maritozzo specializes in a variety of maritozzo: a briochey sort of bun cut open and stuffed with whipped cream. They do savoury versions that intrigued (anchovy and stracciatella, ahhh) but I came for one reason: to sample their award winning carbonara.
This carbonara was good. The yolk made for a rich dish balanced with a touch of saltiness from punchy pecorino, and had pleasant crisps of guanciale. Because the guanciale was crisped up rather than left fatty, it also felt less greasy than one of the other guanciale heavy pastas I tried that had it on the rawer side. I absolutely tore through this.
The cook on pasta was perfect, and my gosh I dream of that cloud of cheese dusting each decadent bite. This restaurant was small, unassuming, very casual (our pasta was served in paper bowls) and the chef visible behind the counter teased me about how much I was scraping my plate. I appreciated the non-trap vibes, and really adored the tiramisu maritozzo we greedily gobbled up for a dessert. I really recommend this place for your carbonara needs.
We also had cacio e pepe here, more on THAT later.
Amatriciana - Trattoria Vecchia Roma
I was very excited to try amatriciana. I love a good tomato sauce with a touch of spice (or more than a touch hah) and this dish sounded like the perfect marriage between a good ol’ red sauce pasta and a carbonara. Just replace yolk with tomato, and a hint of spice with red pepper flakes.
Anyways, I heard this VERY popular restaurant serves their amatriciana flambee’d in a pecorino wheel. Sounds gimmicky, but I can be a sucker for a gimmick done well. This restaurant had a huge line, so I was relieved to have made a reso. The vibes were impeccable and I did enjoy this dish.
I did find it to be my least favourite though: it was GOOD, just not the best of the bunch. Perhaps there is better out there. I love the sauce being paired with thicker bucatini, but I found myself wishing the guanciale had been cooked more. The first few bites of rich, fatty tomato sauce was great… then it just greased me out after awhile. I loved the way the tomato sauce cut through the richness though, and enjoyed the pecorino- perhaps another place would do it better. It really did taste like a rich tomato sauce with nice cheese punch, so the potential for greatness is there!
Gricia - Il Tarallo
We had gricia in the coziest restaurant with that stereotypical Italian outdoor seating situation in a neighbourhood street of Trestevere. With vibes that make you just crave sipping on a spritz, we absolutely dove into our respective pasta dishes.
Gricia pasta was one I hadn’t heard of, and was essentially a yolk-less carbonara situation. I was afraid that without the rich yolk, the pork fat would be overwhelming, but nope. This was Dan’s favourite. Rather than being paired with tonnarelli or bucatini (think, thicker spaghetti), this was served with rigatoni. I normally prefer a more slurpable noodle, but the fat coated the rigatoni beautifully with cheesy, salty bites, ensuring you never slurped up too much fat in one bite. This made for a supremely delicious meal. I’m not sure I like gricia more than carbonara, but it’s close, and I honestly think that the absent yolk makes it easier to eat loads of this.
If you don’t like pork, i would not get this, as it was the heaviest on that cured meat flavour that perfumed each bite. Not overly intense, all things considered, but certainly present.
I also never found this restaurant on any blogs or lists- just a google map deep dive. Skip the famous (and super popular) restaurants in this neighbourhood and go here: impeccable.
Cacio e Pepe - Il Maritozzo & Il Tarallo
We sampled the first cacio e pepe at Il Maritozzo. I was determined to dine on their award winning carbonara, so Dan got the cacio e pepe for a little bit of variety. I loved my carbonara, but I was a touch jealous of Dan.
Cacio e Pepe might be the most simple, but it may just be my new favourite pasta in the world. It helps that it’s so light. No pork. No yolk. No butter. Just perfectly emulsified pecorino cheese in starchy pasta water that coats each noodle to perfection. The kick of freshly cracked peppercorn just tops it all off perfectly. This was so good at Il Maritozzo, that I polished Dan’s last bites, and scraaaaped his bowl- which the chef behind the counter teased me for.
When we went to Il Tarallo the very next night, I had to have it again. All. To. My. Self. Divine. I did like Il Maritozzo’s more; I love a punchy cheese flavour, and it was PUNCHY at Il Maritozzo. Dan preferred Tarallo, where the cheese was tasty, but more mild overall. Regardless, if I had only had Il Tarallo’s version, it would still be my favourite of the bunch.
I liked it’s so much, I bought a block of pecorino and have recreated this dish three times.
Either way Rome is truly a heaven for cheese lovers. Not in a overwhelming look-at-this-cheese-pull or stomach rumbling kind of way. In we use a reasonable amount of high quality punchy cheese in delicious pasta kind of way. If I were to recommend a foodie trip through Italy, I would insist on doing a pasta pilgrimage of the traditional ones of Rome. Up next: pizza, because wow, Romans really do this well too.
YUMMMM
Time to eat! We are heading to Rome this summer with our gluten-free teenager. So if any of the wonderful places you visit also offer gluten free pasta, then would love to know. Thanks!!