Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 138
Rome, Florence, Venice : restaurant reservation ?Hi !
We will be in Rome, Florence and Venice un july. We are foodies and we are looking to make that trip a food fest ( amongst other pleasures !).

Is there any particular must eat restaurant that would need a reservation ?

Thanks !

I’m not really sure what you would consider a must eat restaurant. You haven’t shared anything that would really help narrow it down. I would suggest spending some time reading old threads on Chowhound’s forums to get a feel for the restaurant scene in each city. Katie Parla and Elizabeth Minchilli have blogs/apps that are decent place to start at least for Rome. But beware on Chowhound; there’s a disdain for such broad questions like this. No one can distill a food scene as vast as Rome’s, for instance, in a couple of paragraphs. You have to do a bit of your own digging. But having done it myself, it’s not hard.

But whatever places you decide on, I would anticipate making reservations at least a few days inn advance. Small restaurants with limited seating and lots of tourists. It’s hard to get a table just about anywhere worth eating without a reservation.

Venice: Antiche Carampane (closed Sun-Mon)

Stu Tower recommended this place to us and we had an excellent meal there a few years ago.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaura...e_Tuscany.html

PS...to clarify, this was an excellent meal that seemed to typify Florentine cuisine....I cannot be sure that it fits your request for "must eat".

My favorite thing to eat in Florence is bistecca fiorentina and if you like meat I would call it a must eat. Most recently we had excellent bistecca fiorentina at Trattoria I Due G. It was actually remarkably good. Not in the exact tourist center but close enough to be an easy walk.

In Rome, my favorite Roman dishes are carciofi giudia and coda vaccinara. For a sauce of coda vaccinara on pasta, either La Campana on via Campana or Perilli near Piramide are my favorites. La Campana also has carciofi giudia. These are both sort of old fashioned Roman restaurants where the food is hearty and traditional. The orange chocolate gelato at Frigidarium is good, but it's better at Gelataria del Teatro.

I had gnochetti and some almost fried carciofi at a place called Ristorante Archimede in Rome and both were worth going back for. White tablecloth, but a bit old fashioned.

In Venice, much more hip, more inventive than my Rome favorites, is Il Gatto Nero. Utterly delicious.

All of these need reservations.

There are folks here that can direct you to more inventive and/or higher end places with probably better wine lists.
Some people who use the term "foodies" like higher end places with more inventive dishes. That's not me so ignore my recs if that's you.