New Year's Eve dinner in Rome-suggestions, please

What's "nice" about eating in Roma is the conviviality plus the tasty food, best when it is closest to home cooked -- which you will soon discover when you are there. The fancy restaurants with the set - menus are expensive, and stuffy -- and similar to the disapponting experience you have in New York.

Romans tend to spend New Year's Eve with family (or out of the country, skiing). My strategy for spending New Year's eve in Rome would be that if I had a great, fun meal someplace before that -- be it lunch or dinner -- ask the owner if they will be open New Year's Eve. If the answer is yes, ask if it is a special menu (and the price, if you're still interested.). If the answer is no, ask the owner if he knows of someplace good, cheap and fun that will be open.

PS: I wanted to add that some of the bigger public celebrations in Rome on New Year's Eve-- around the Piazza del Popolo, Campo dei Fiori, and other places -- can be packed and degenerate into dousing with wine and other wild-youth drunken revelry -- which might be more alarming and annoying than fun. You might plan to avoid them.

Have a great trip!

Zeppole, I was hoping you'd see this post. Thanks for the wonderful suggestion about returning to a good restaurant for New Year's eve. We did, in fact, have a terrific dinner at a small "local' restaurant near our rented apartment in Rome last October. We were staying near the Tiber along the Lungotevere Marzio and there was a resto in a tiny square behind us called B4. Very, very nice owner--very friendly--and an excellent meal. I should probably stop back and see about New Year's eve.

Any suggestions for a special place to be at midnight, other than the rowdy ones you mentioned?

Thanks!

One of our favorites in Rome is Vecchia Roma. http://www.ristorantevecchiaroma.com/

You will likely still be at table at midnight. I have a trip report in great detail about a New Year's Eve in Italy. Dinner starts late and is multi-course with some very traditional touches and does not end until close to 1 am. Your family will, by midnight, have become part of someone elses family and you will be celebrating the hour together.

Good idea to see if B4 will be open and what they will be serving.

For New Year's Eve, I would be more inclined to stay out the piazze and streets (the Roman tradition is to throw your broken crockery out the window) and peek into a midnight mass -- not because I'm religious, but because Italian churches are often most beautifully and brilliantely lit for high mass on the holidays. My pick for a church would be Santa Maria in Trastevere, with its gorgeous, gorgeous mosaics and my pick therefore for a restaurant before would be the absolutely delicious and totally non-touristy, affordable Sor'eva, in the piazza delle Rovere, a true local family trattoria with heart-warming pastas, up the Tiber in between Trastevere and St. Peter's.

Sor'Eva tel no

0039 06 6875797

David's favorite is Giarrosto Toscano

http://www.romeguide.it/FILES/ristoranti/giratosca/toscano.htm

Hi, I live in Rome and often use the diningcity website to search for restaurants. At the moment you can also search for places which are open on Christmas and Newyear. For a nice place and relatively quit place but not to far from the maddening crowd on campo de fiori I would go to La Regola http://www.diningcity.com/rome/ristorantelaregola21/index_eng.jsp or restaurant Cafe Romano near the Spanish steps.

There are two great little restaurants in and near Piazza Montevecchio, about 150 meters from Navonna, down via dei Coronari. Ristorante Montevecchio is really good, I've eaten there several times...

http://www.diningcity.com/rome/ristorantemontevecchio21/index_eng.jsp

Just around the corner is another restaurant, that for the life of me I cannot remember the name. Both are open on NYE.