Cheap and Cheerful Trattorias in Rome
 

Hi all,

A couple years ago I had the pleasure of eating (several times) at La Casalinga, one of the few good, budget-priced trattorias in Florence. Packed with locals, it was sprawling and noisy and and obviously hadn't been renovated in quite some time. It also offered some of the best Tuscan food I've ever had, and oh my goodness was it cheap.

And so I'm wondering if there are many Roman analogues to this restaurant. I've been to one or two out-of-the-way places in Trastevere that came close, but they were *just* wide of the mark -- and mostly due to the quality of the food.

Can anyone, then, recommend a cheap 'n' cheerful place like this in Rome?

Thanks!

JVM

Hi Jim,

This is a portion from one of my Rome trip reports. Hope you find something you enjoy.

1) Il Fico - Piazza del Fico 24/25 39 066875568 Very fresh & creative menu I saw them bring out a whole fish to show a customer for approval before preparing it. Great antipasti, fried calamari, very good wine and loved my steak.

2) Osteria del Pegno-Vicola di Montevecchio 8. Just off Coronari by the only fountain on Coronari. Not so inexpensive, small, intimate & romantic. Awesome carbonara and steamed clams! I tend to save this one for my last night there...

3) Lo Stroggna (sp) address? On the corner of Via Panico and Coronari. Big family run restaurant, casual, wonderful pizza, steamed clams in broth over a heaping piece of bread, house wine is not the best, great rip apart rolls I think from Forno in Campo dei Fiori. Very kind and lovely waitress who helped me immensely with my Italian pronunciations and received a large tip from us.

4) Taverna Le Coppelle-Via dellle Coppelle 38-39 Close to Navona & Rotunda/Pantheon. Inexpensive, good house wine, great pizza, the best fried squash blossoms and fried olives, delicious broccoli pasta.

5) Baffetto - Via del Governo Vecchio 114. Tried this from all the raves I had read on this board and it was indeed worth trying, tasty tasty pizza! 5 of us 4 pizzas two salads wine 2 desserts and water came to something crazy like 47 euros. There is also now a Baffetto #2 in Campo dei Fiori which we did not go to.

6) La Taverna del Ghetto. Have lost the card so I have no address to give. We did try a somewhat upscale restaurant in area called La Taverna del Ghetto. I had the goulash which was out of this world as was my sister's braised beef in a red sauce. We just wandered in there off the street cold and a bit wet after leaving from the "We are the future concert" at Circus Maximus. It was a nice find! None of us loved the fried artichokes, but glad we tried them.

7) Alle Fratte di Trastevere - Via delle Fratte di Trastevere 49/50. This too was another great recommendation from a Fodors poster. As she suggested I had the smoked salmon pasta with vodka and cream as a first and grilled lamb chops mmmmm!

This is a great list ecat. Not yet being familiar w/ addresses, can you give an idea of the general area for these restaurants ( e.g, Campo, Navona )? Thanks..........

Hi again,

Sure, 1 thru 5 are in the center around Navona/Pantheon/Campo di Fiori. We rented an apartment on Via Coronari so we walked to all of these.

6 Closer to Campo Di Fiori in the Jewish Ghetto and 7 is in Trastevere.

you can use www.mappy.com and put in the street/city name and presto changeo you are there.

ttt

great list..adding it to my Rome info!

Anne

Walking back towards our hotel from the Saint Peters area, at about 9:30 pm, on Via Cola di Rienzo. After a long evening of walking, we were tired and hungary and had just about given up finding a trattoria before reaching our hotel and as chance would have it, we found the best trattoria in all of our 8 nights there. It is the "San Marco Pizzeria" on via Tacho (just off of Via Rienzo). This is in the Prati area on the map It was packed, it was noisey, and everyone seemed to be having a really good time. They "squeezed" us in and the food was delicious. I had the 4 cheese pizza, baked in a wood oven, the wife had spahetti, we both had dessert and shared a liter of house wine and a liter of water, for only 38E. We went back two other nights and it was the same every night. We now have another favorite trattoria to replace the one that closed in the intervening two years of our absence.

Lee

I too enjoyed Osteria del Pegno.

In the same neighbourhood are the more expensive Cantina del Vecchio (just around the corner in fact) and Montevecchio, which I loved almsot as much as the Cantina.

Another Fodorite has written:

Ristorante Montevecchio, on Piazza Montevecchio, a tiny square near Piazza Navona. It's a very small, lovely place with lots of greenery and flickering candles outside and a cozy-looking interior for cooler months. The food was wonderful, too.... You'll probably need a reservation, which we made in person a couple of days beforehand. The restaurant didn't look like much that day--it was closed but the owner was inside doing some paperwork--but when we arrived for dinner, the transformation was magical. Have a wonderful time.

Hey wow, thanks everybody. Your suggestions all sound very good.

Any more? Anyone else have the goods on eating cheaply and well in Rome?

OK, I don't even know what is strictly a trattoria, but here are some restaurant experiences we had in Rome:

Our favorite restaurants were

Pierluigi (Piazza de Ricci - very close to Camp de Fiori, need reservations - this place was GREAT - a little expensive)

Al Fontanone (46 Piazza Trilussa, Trastevere)

Da Gildo (31 Via della Scala, Trastevere)

We also ate at Insalata Ricci (85 L. go dei Chiavani - very close, good, cheap sort of a chain restaurant)

La Carbonara (in Campo de Fiori - nice atmosphere, quite good food, lots of tourists, not cheap)

Hostario Giulio (19 via della Barchetta - decent).

Our landlord (who is Roman) recommended a restaurant called Al Ciack at 21 Vicolo dei Cinque (Trastevere) which looked great but my youngest son panicked when he looked at the menu. We would have loved to have eaten there.

The other restaurant we missed that has RAVE reviews everywhere is Al Bric, which is on Via Pellegrino, off Campo de Fiori on the right hand side of the street. For some reason, we never made it there either. Next time!

Okay, I'm sure one/several Fodorits are going to come up with the specific meaning of Trattoria sooo....as long as we're along that vein, How does one pronounce that? Is the accent on the next to the last syllable, the i, or is it on the one before, the o?

Too many years since I've been to Italy to remember, but they sure were excellent quality for the price usually!

Trat-to-RI-a

I have treid to google this word, with no success, to find its derivation.

Let me hazard a guess, however: It appears to be a cognate of the French traiteur (caterer).

Now, traiteur could come from one of two obvious roots:

Trare (Past participle: tractus), to drag -- which seems unlikely

(This is the origin of our word tractor. And a tractor is nothing like a traiteur)

Traiter (p.p.: traite) to treat; hence traitement -- treatment; traite -- treaty

This sounds distinctly more promising!

So a trattoria, I infer is a place or business dealing in "treated" (i.e prepared) food

A trattoria falls in between an osteria and a ristorante. Clear, no?

Actually, traditionally a trattoria was less formal than a restaurant, more of a kind of neighborhood mom-and-pop place, while an osteria was more of a rustic inn-with-drinks type of place.

However, these distinctions have become pretty well meaningless, with some expensive and pretty fancy restaurants calling themselves trattorie, or even osterie, in an effort to sound kind of wholesome and tradtional, while some trattorie call themselves ristoranti in an attempt to sound more upscale.

Sort of like blurring the line between Tavern on the Green and Joe's Tavern down the street from you.

"a trattoria was less formal than a restaurant"

Make that "less formal than a ristorante."

Who's on first?

Tedgale, your derivation is spot-on, according to the "trattoria" defintion at http://www.m-w.com .

I'd recomment Da Olindo on vicolo della Scala in Trastevere but it's an Ostaria and it may be something that falls *just* wide of the mark. We really liked some dishes; go simple here. No-nonsense service.

Al Ciack is really good food, but it's not cheap. It's not expensive either, but not cheap. Cheerful, yes.

Leely:
Good to hear a recommendation for Al Ciack. It was the one that got away for us. The menu looked very interesting.

Orso 80...just order the antipasti and a bottle of wine. Life is good.

ttt

Marking for my future trip to Rome...