The Good Life
When in Rome, Eat at These Five Restaurants
Michael Martin
06/06/08 - 01:45 PM EDT
It's high season in Rome, and the energy in the city is electric as folks prepare for the August holidays. Now is one of the best times to visit Rome, as the warm weather fills the street cafes around the city's piazzas and alleyways with locals in designer sunglasses and freshly pressed linen.
Visitors come to Rome expecting to enjoy the best meals of their lives, as the capital city is a veritable Garden of Eden for pasta lovers, cheese connoisseurs and wine aficionados. With as diverse a collection of hotspot eateries as Paris or London, Rome's hotspots this summer are a mix-and-match of buzzing bistros and celebrity eateries that won't be clogged with tourists and yet won't require public humiliation just to get a reservation. Here are five to try.
Obika
Neighborhood: Piazza di Firenze
Foodie Tip: Indulge in the affordable wine list that includes rare, limited-edition bottles available by the glass. On a summer afternoon, this Japanese-inspired eatery with signature sushi bar and industrial-style café of metal chairs and shiny concrete floors is often packed. But instead of refrigerators displaying sliced sashimi and sushi, this fashionista hangout is actually a mozzarella raw bar serving Italy's finest fromage with accompaniments like fresh charcuterie plates, subtle pastas and organically-grown salads.
Specializing in cheeses of the Campania and Puglia region, birthplace of the burrata, daytime diners arrive with Ferragamo and Tod's shopping bags and snag a seat at the counter-style bar or one of the coveted four-tops in the more formal seated-section of the restaurant. Open for all-day dining, Obika has inspired several spinoffs throughout Europe, including a location in Selfridge's London. The original is still the best.
Neighborhood: Via del Corso
Foodie Tip: Not just for food, kitchen-lovers should make use of the gourmet bookstore with one of the largest collection of cookbooks in Rome. Located near Via del Corso, this massive food emporium features an on-site gourmet restaurant, wine bar, pizzeria and kitchenware shop. Housed around a 1930s marble piazza, the ever-expanding collection of boutique eateries is a lunch staple for socialite housewives who share the space with dapper businessmen negotiating their way through ever-expressive power meetings. Divided between two separate restaurants, the more casual eatery is a street-level pizzeria of homemade pastas and fresh salads. More upscale, and somewhat calmer, is the upstairs restaurant with its tailored décor of club chairs and paneled-walls serving Italian and Pacific Rim cuisine in such combinations as spaghetti stir-fried with market-fresh vegetables, tempura prawns with spring vegetables and stir-fried scallops with Italian herbs.
Glass Hostaria
Neighborhood: Trastevere
Foodie Tips: Even if you're full, try the white truffle crème brûlée to finish. One of the hottest restaurants to hit Trastevere in years, Glass Hostaria is a cutting-edge architectural eatery with a traditional flair for local artesian cuisine. Tucked inside a 15th-century palazzo on a picturesque alleyway, the uber-modern space is a lofty two-story design with iron-staircase rising through its center. Stainless-steel tables with not-so-comfy resin chairs line the main dining room with parquet-wood floors and exposed bedrock columns. A pan-Italian menu features foodie-pleasing delights and traditional dishes at a surprisingly affordable price. Local market-fresh salads and vegetables are coupled with homemade breads from a wood fire oven. Pasta dishes include Castelmagno-stuffed ravioli in butter emulsion with fresh shavings of white Alba truffles. Entrees vary between provincial chicken or breaded veal cutlet to a more elaborate ricotta-stuffed duck breast with cherry sauce.
Neighborhood: Piazza di Spagna
Foodie Tips: A must-stop for serious shoppers, the café attracts a sunglass set of full-time fashionistas and ladies who lunch. Located on one of the trendiest shopping streets in Rome, Café TAD is found within a boutique department store that tames the clothing desires of Italy's hottest actresses and starlets. This small-scale department store is a regular stomping ground for A-List shoppers looking to score high-end fragrances, the odd designer furniture piece, a blowout by hair stylist Roberto D'Antonio or simply a quick bite at the utterly chic Café TAD. A modest café with Italian kitchen prepares gourmet lunches and to-go bags for local office workers, Café TAD is a hotbed of fashion insiders and sassy retail workers that frequent it for 1 p.m. lunch. In between shopping for labels like Proenza Schuler, Balenciaga and Hussein Chalaya, a stiletto-sporting clientele indulges on delicate pastas, macrobiotic salads and seafood specialties cooked up from a one-room kitchen. The International Wine Academy
Neighborhood: Spanish Steps
Foodie Tips: Membership is surprisingly affordable, around 20-Euro for a one-day pass that includes serious wine consultation. Virtually every cobblestone of the Piazza di Spagna is filled with camera-drawn tourists looking for that one perfect shot of the Spanish Steps. At the top of the steps and just around the corner, removed from the flash bulbs and gelato shops, is where you'll find the exclusive International Wine Academy, which is owned and operated by the owner of Rome's famed Hassler Hotel.
It's one of Rome's best-kept secrets. A combination of luxury four-room boutique hotel, wine school and gourmand eatery attracting devoted wine lovers looking for something as simple as an afternoon of tasting or as comprehensive as a six-lesson history course in regional Italian wines. Housed in a 16th-century palazzo, the historic location was the site of the legendary feasts of Lucullus, hedonist consul of Rome and also Italy's first true foodie.