Roma Sparita
Piazza Santa Cecilia 24
Trastevere, Rome, Italy
There’s a dish here that the late Anthony Bourdain once described as “This could be the greatest thing in the history of the world”. A huge statement. He wanted to keep the place a secret but that didn’t happen. It was Roma Sparita. So what is the dish you ask? Well we’ll come to that in a second - but yes, we had it - and it was certainly very good.
We wanted to make sure we had room for our main courses but still succumbed to ordering some starters. The zucchini flowers (fiori di zucca) were crisp on the outside and oozed cheese when we bit in to them. It was a great start. Then we had stuffed and deep fried olives (olive all’ascolana). It’s a great way to eat olives.
Then it was time for the dish. It was called tagliolini cacio y pepe. The tagliolini was a type of pasta and the cacio e pepe was a cheese and pepper sauce. It was basically pasta with cheesy peppery sauce. It was creamy with a bit of peppery bite. To top it all off, here they served it all in a wonderfully crispy mozzarella bowl. You can eat the filling and the delicious dish! It really was a great dish - in every sense of the word!
The other main we had was bucatini all’amatriciana. The bucatini pasta was like a thick spaghetti and the sauce was a mix of pork, tomato, onion and cheese. Again it was a very tasty dish.
Roma Sparita has become extremely popular since Anthony Bourdain highlighted how good their cacio e pepe was. It’s a lovely dish in a very charming restaurant that sits on a pleasant square in Rome. It’s certainly worth finding.
If you’re planning a visit here it’s a good idea to book. While we were there it filled up completely and people were being turned away. It was a weekday lunch too.