From a three-star aerie over the rooftops to a no-reservations trattoria that’s been arguing about carbonara since 1935.
Rome does not lack for opinions about where to eat. Everyone has a carbonara, a cacio e pepe, a spot their nonna swore by. We’re not going to pretend we’ve settled the debate, we haven’t, nobody has, but these fifteen are the ones worth building a reservation calendar around, from a single Michelin-starred splurge to a Testaccio institution that’s been serving oxtail since 1887.
1. La Pergola
Trionfale, atop the Rome Cavalieri, a Waldorf Astoria Hotel
Rome’s only three-Michelin-star restaurant, and it has held that distinction alone since 2005. Heinz Beck, a Bavarian who arrived in 1994 planning to stay two years, is still at the stoves three decades later, now working alongside sommelier Marco Reitano, who has run the cellar just as long. The room was fully reimagined by Paris studio Jouin Manku in 2024, all travertine tones and Roman red, but the real draw hasn’t changed: floor-to-ceiling views from Monte Mario that take in the dome of St. Peter’s to the west and the Colosseum to the south as the light shifts through dinner. The wine list runs past fifty thousand bottles, the water menu alone has close to thirty options, and dessert arrives via a wheeled trolley of jellies, cream puffs, and pralines that regulars call the “treasure chest.” Expect a proper three-figure-per-person evening once wine is added, and know that the restaurant closes for the whole of the summer break in early to late August. Book at least a few weeks out, and ask for a table by the glass.
romecavalieri.com/la-pergola
2. Il Pagliaccio
Via dei Banchi Vecchi, a 10-minute walk from Piazza Navona
Anthony Genovese’s two-star dining room sits behind an unassuming door, dark navy walls, a checkerboard floor, and a single painting of a winking clown presiding over ten tables. Genovese’s background, French-born, Calabrian heritage, years spent cooking in Japan, Malaysia, and Britain, shows up everywhere on the menu without ever feeling like a gimmick. There’s no à la carte: you choose between Circus, a longer East-meets-West tasting journey, Scintille, a shorter and more essential menu, or Parallels, served in a private room for real intimacy. Sommelier Luca Belleggia oversees a list of roughly two thousand labels. Tasting menus run in the region of €190–200 per person before wine, and lunch service is more limited than dinner, so plan around it.
ristoranteilpagliaccio.com
3. Enoteca La Torre
Lungotevere delle Armi, inside Villa Laetitia
Domenico Stile’s two-star kitchen operates out of one of Rome’s more surprising settings: Villa Laetitia, the 1911 residence of Anna Fendi Venturini, its architecture a Renaissance-Baroque mash-up with a glass-walled dining hall that’s become the room’s signature. Stile earned his first star in Viterbo back in 2010 before relocating the restaurant to Rome in 2013, and the kitchen still leans on his Campanian upbringing, most visibly in a dish of egg, buffalo taleggio, and black truffle that regulars order on repeat. The wine list runs deep and the petit four cart at the end of the meal is worth pacing yourself for. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and the garden terrace is the ask for warmer months.
enotecalatorreroma.com
4. Acquolina
Inside The First Roma Arte, near Piazza del Popolo
Daniele Lippi picked up a second Michelin star here in 2023, cooking Mediterranean food that reaches well past Italy’s own coastline. The dining room is deliberately minimal, marine blues, soft lighting, art on the walls doing most of the talking, and the food follows the same instinct: technical without being showy. Two tasting menus anchor the experience, Periplo, built entirely around the sea, and Anabasi Catabasi, which folds in meat alongside it, plus a shorter AB Originale menu for a lighter visit. Expect somewhere between €120 and €170 per person depending which path you choose. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.
acquolinaristorante.it
5. Glass Hostaria
Vicolo del Cinque, Trastevere
Cristina Bowerman remains one of the only women in Rome to hold a Michelin star, and her one-star restaurant, set inside a former carriage workshop with soaring ceilings, still feels like one of the city’s more inventive tables. Born in Puglia, trained partly in Texas and at Le Cordon Bleu, she brings a genuinely international register to a menu that nods to Lazio tradition without being bound by it, and there’s a full vegetarian tasting menu alongside the standard one, unusual for a room at this level. Prices sit more accessibly than most of Rome’s starred kitchens, roughly €80–115 per person for the tasting menu, which makes it one of the better entry points into Michelin-level cooking in the city.
glasshostaria.it
6. Il Sanlorenzo
Via dei Chiavari 4/5
A historic palazzo built directly over the remains of the Teatro di Pompeo, the ancient theatre where Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, now houses what a lot of serious eaters consider Rome’s best seafood address. Owners Enrico Pierri and Elena Lenzini source almost exclusively from the island of Ponza and the port of Civitavecchia, and the fish is served raw or barely cooked, amberjack tartare, raw scampi, sea urchin roe, a whole catch baked simply in a salt crust. It isn’t cheap, figure on €75 and up per person before wine, but the sourcing is the entire point: this is a kitchen built around restraint rather than sauce-work. Closed Monday lunch and Sunday dinner, and reservations are worth making well ahead for weekend evenings.
ilsanlorenzo.it
7. Assaggia
Via Margutta 19, near the Spanish Steps
The idea here, Roman grandmothers’ recipes, shrunk down into tasting-sized portions, was dreamed up by restaurateur Leonardo Stabile and brought to Rome under the direction of star chef Angelo Troiani of Il Convivio, with chef Daniele Ciaccio running the kitchen day to day. The tasting format gives you six or nine dishes on a single tray, carbonara, vignarola, trippa alla romana, polpette al sugo, so you can work through the whole canon of Roman cooking in one sitting without committing to a single main. It’s a genuinely clever format for a first visit to the city, and there’s a secret garden terrace out back that most passersby on Via Margutta never even notice. Menus run around €27 for six tastes or €37 for nine, with extra tastes at €6 each, making it one of the more accessible entries on this list.
assaggiaroma.com
8. Antica Pesa
Via Garibaldi 18, Trastevere
The Panella family has run this grand dining room since 1922, on a street that was once a 17th-century papal customs post where wheat taxes were collected, hence the name, “the antique scales.” It’s been a quiet celebrity magnet for decades (Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe are regularly cited regulars, and George Clooney has been photographed here more than once), but the appeal isn’t really about who else is in the room. The main dining hall has a working fireplace surrounded by frescoes from artists early in their careers, and there’s a walled garden terrace, Il Giardino, for warmer evenings. Expect €50–100 per person for a full meal with wine. The Panellas opened a Brooklyn outpost in 2012, but the original is still the one worth the trip.
anticapesa.it
9. Armando al Pantheon
Salita de’ Crescenzi 31, a minute’s walk from the Pantheon
Three generations of the Gargioli family have run this small, wood-panelled trattoria since 1961, and it’s managed the rare trick of staying genuinely excellent despite sitting in the most tourist-trafficked square footage in Rome. Claudio and Fabrizio Gargioli now work the kitchen alongside the next generation, and the menu leans into dishes that have quietly become classics here: fettuccine con rigaje di pollo (chicken giblets in tomato sauce), trippa alla romana, carciofi alla romana in season, and a sour-cherry tart to finish. Past regulars have included Jean-Paul Sartre; more recent visitors have included Steve Martin and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Closed Sundays, and reservations are genuinely necessary despite the unassuming room.
armandoalpantheon.it
10. Da Enzo al 29
Via dei Vascellari 29, Trastevere
No reservations, full stop, so arrive before service starts or expect to queue on the street with everyone else, AS Roma players included, by most accounts. The trattoria traces back to 1935, with the Di Felice family (Roberto in the kitchen, Chiara, Francesco, and Elisabetta running the rest) at the helm since the 1980s and pulling produce from their own farm, Le Terre di Enzo, in the Sabina hills outside Rieti: wild asparagus, San Marzano tomatoes, zucchini flowers, all of it seasonal. The room is small, thirty seats at most, lemon-yellow walls, a photo of the original Enzo watching over the tables, and the cacio e pepe and carbonara are argued over by locals as being among the city’s best. Cash-only tendencies and a genuinely no-frills setting are part of the charm, not a flaw.
daenzoal29.com
11. Salumeria Roscioli
Via dei Giubbonari 21, near Campo de’ Fiori
Part delicatessen, part restaurant, part wine bar, and fully booked most nights weeks in advance. The counter alone is worth the visit: more than 150 cured meats and 350-plus cheeses, hand-cut, alongside raw fish from the Tyrrhenian and a genuinely serious wine list. Chef Fabrizio Di Stefano now runs the kitchen (Nabil Hadj Hassen held the post for two decades before him), and the carbonara and cacio e pepe here regularly top “best in Rome” lists, taken seriously enough that the shop has sold a kit to replicate the cacio e pepe at home. Seating is split between the deli counter, upstairs tables, and a small subterranean wine cellar for private dinners. Book well ahead, particularly for dinner.
salumeriaroscioli.com
12. Checchino dal 1887
Via di Monte Testaccio 30, Testaccio
Run by the fifth generation of the Mariani family, directly across from the old Roman slaughterhouse the entire Testaccio neighbourhood grew up around. The kitchen’s whole identity is built on the “fifth quarter,” the offal cuts that were once a slaughterhouse worker’s wage, and it does them properly: coda alla vaccinara (oxtail braised with tomato and celery), rigatoni with lamb pagliata, a mixed offal platter called padellotto alla macellara, and roasted lamb sweetbreads, alongside a full menu of Roman classics for anyone less adventurous. White-jacketed waiters still work a wine trolley through the dining room, and the cellar, over 500 labels, sits inside Monte dei Cocci, an artificial hill made entirely of shattered ancient Roman amphorae. Moderate to upper price range, and it’s the single best address in the city for this specific, very Roman style of cooking.
checchino-dal-1887.com
13. Piperno
Monte de’ Cenci 9, on the edge of the Jewish Ghetto
Opened in 1860 by Pacifico Piperno and now run by the Mazzarella and Boni families, this is the address most Romans mean when they talk about carciofi alla giudia, the twice-fried artichokes that are one of the defining dishes of Roman-Jewish cuisine, and one of the reasons the Ghetto’s cooking survived centuries of hardship intact. Beyond the artichokes, look for tortino di alici ed indivia (anchovy and endive bake), gnocchi alla sorrentina, fried salt cod, and palle del nonno for dessert. Three air-conditioned dining rooms plus a quiet outdoor courtyard tucked away from the tourist flow around Campo de’ Fiori. Closed Sunday evening and all day Monday.
ristorantepiperno.it
14. Seu Pizza Illuminati
Via Angelo Bargoni 10–18, Trastevere
Pierdaniele Seu takes the traditionally thin, cracker-crisp Roman pizza crust and inflates it toward Neapolitan territory, then tops it with combinations a purist might raise an eyebrow at, chicken shows up, so does cantaloupe on the seasonal menu. It’s a deliberately disruptive kitchen within a city that takes its pizza orthodoxy seriously, and it’s earned a loyal following for it. Seu has since opened a second, more traditional thin-crust spot nearby called TAC, if you want to compare his two philosophies back to back on the same trip. Casual, easygoing, and considerably less formal than most of this list, book ahead on weekends regardless.
seupizza.com
15. Felice a Testaccio
Via Mastro Giorgio 29, Testaccio
One dish, done as well as it’s done anywhere in the city: cacio e pepe, mixed tableside until every strand of pasta is coated in a cloud of pecorino and black pepper. It’s become enough of a phenomenon that Felice has expanded to Milan and, more recently, Turin, but the original Testaccio room is still the one worth the detour, unpretentious, reliably packed, and entirely unbothered by its own reputation. Order the cacio e pepe first, then let the rest of the menu, solidly Roman, nothing showy, take care of the rest of the meal.
feliceatestaccio.com
Fifteen tables, most of which need booking well ahead. Start with whichever one matches your mood, and work your way down the list on the next trip.
