I have been a fan of Anthony Bourdain for a long time. I have been happy with his restaurant recommendations that I have tried. If you watch his show, you may remember an episode on Rome that featured cacio e pepe, cheese and pepper pasta. In the only time I can remember Bourdain failing to mention the restaurant name, he just referred to it as Restaurant X. Five seconds of searching on the Internet will tell you Restaurant X is Roma Sparita in the Trastevere neighborhood.
We headed out to Trastevere to see what the hype was about. I am glad I tried out their taglioni al cacio e pepe, but with some reservations. It had a great cheese and pepper flavor balance with perfectly cooked pasta. The dish was good. It would very difficult to impossible in my opinion to truly make this dish great. I will be probably be able to better picture the great version when I run into it. The highlight of the dish is arguably the perfectly toasted cheese crust bowl the pasta is served in. If I had a shorter stay in Rome, I don't think it would have been worth the trouble to make it out to Roma Sparita for this simple pasta dish. I doubt this good version is that much better on an absolute scale than any version that someone puts a little effort into with quality ingredients.
Their other speciality is oxtail. Coda alla Vaccinara is a Roman oxtail stew. I thought the meat was cooked decently tender. I did think the dish lacked depth of flavor and was overly salty though.
To be healthy, we also had some greens. I think it was swiss chard. I do think the swiss chard was perfectly cooked with just a little garlic and spices.
Ristorante Pizzeria Roma Sparita
Piazza Santa Cecilia, 24 Roma - Zona Trastevere
No comments:
Post a Comment