The 10 best food tips for Rome — from tiramisu to the best pizza in the city

Some places become famous because someone promotes them. Others become famous because they've delivered the same quality for decades and eventually have no choice but to be famous. Trattoria Da Enzo al 29 in Trastevere is the latter.

Time Out officially named Da Enzo al 29 Rome's best restaurant 2025. And anyone who's been there understands why.

Gabriele Bonci is not a pizza baker. He's a scientist who happens to make dough. For years he's researched flour types, hydration, fermentation times and topping combinations with a chemist's precision. The result is Bonci Pizzarium in Prati — and it's widely considered the best Pizza al Taglio in the world.

Margherita — the benchmark. If Bonci makes the simplest version extraordinary, you know what the dough can do. Potato & Rosemary — one of the most popular classics. Creative seasonal toppings — courgette flowers with ricotta, pear with Gorgonzola, Burrata with truffle cream. Different every day. Always good.

Sooner or later you'll stumble across a small shop on a lane near Piazza Navona on TikTok. Hundreds of videos, always the same image: a queue on the pavement, excited faces, and then the first spoonful. The place is called Two Sizes – and the hype is justified.

Two Sizes is not a restaurant, not a café, not a sit-down experience. It's a small tiramisu shop on Via del Governo Vecchio 88 – one of Rome's most beautiful pedestrian lanes running from Campo de' Fiori towards Piazza Navona. The concept is simple: queue up, choose your flavour, pay, eat as you walk. No tables, no reservation, no fuss.

In 2009 Stefano Callegari stood in his pizzeria in Testaccio with a problem. He wanted to make Roman classics — Oxtail, Chicken Cacciatore, Tripe in tomato sauce — portable. He took pizza dough, baked it into a triangle, and cut one side open. The Trapizzino was born.

Polpetta al Sugo — one big meatball in thick tomato sauce. The most ordered. The sauce runs out the sides, the paper cone catches it. Pollo alla Cacciatora — chicken braised with tomatoes, olives, rosemary. Coda alla Vaccinara — oxtail in tomato sauce. The most Roman experience.

There's a sound you need to learn in Rome. The sound of hot oil when a Supplì goes in. A quick sizzle, then silence, then the smell of crispy breadcrumbs and ragù. At Supplì Roma in Trastevere you hear it a hundred times a day.

Quick clarification: a Supplì is not the same as a Sicilian Arancino. The Roman Supplì is elongated, smaller, filled with rice in tomato ragù and a mozzarella core that forms long white threads when you pull it apart. Those threads gave it its nickname: Supplì al Telefono.

There's a video that started it all. Tommaso Mazzanti slices open a freshly baked Schiacciata flatbread. Steam rises. He looks at the camera and says: "Bada come la fuma" — look how it steams. 30 million TikTok views. And since then, a queue outside every All'Antico Vinaio in the world.

The secret isn't the filling. It's the bread. Schiacciata is a Tuscan flatbread — flatter than focaccia, less oily, with a thin crispy crust and a soft, slightly chewy interior. Baked fresh, daily, multiple times a day. If you're lucky enough to get one straight from the oven, it steams when cut. That's the video. That's the moment people queue for.

The first thing you see is a woman. She sits behind a glass pane at the restaurant's façade, making pasta. By hand. Slow, methodical, rhythmic. She doesn't look up. And you stand on the pavement unable to look away.

That's not a marketing gimmick. That's the soul of the restaurant.

There are places in Rome that locals don't like to talk about. Not because they're bad — but because they want to keep them to themselves. Il Maritozzaro in Trastevere is one of those places. Since 1960 this little bar has done the same thing: the best Maritozzo in the city.

Rome's oldest sweet pastry: a soft, lightly sweet brioche bun, split open and generously — very generously — filled with fresh whipped cream. Originally an Easter pastry, it became Rome's daily breakfast tradition. The name comes from marito — husband. Legend has it that a groom would give his bride a Maritozzo the night before the wedding, sometimes with a ring hidden inside.

There's no sign. No website. No Instagram page with professional food photos. Just a small, unremarkable door in a lane of the Jewish Ghetto — and almost always a queue outside. Those who know what awaits inside will queue anyway.

In 1555, Pope Paul IV issued a decree: Jews in the Ghetto were forbidden from selling dairy products. Ricotta — a cornerstone of Jewish-Roman cuisine — was officially banned. The bakers' solution was as simple as it was ingenious: they hid the ricotta. They baked it into a thick, fully enclosed pastry crust and mixed dark sour cherries throughout to disguise the white filling. No open lattice, no window — a completely sealed tart with a dark, almost burnt surface. The decree is centuries past. The tart remains — exactly as it was then.

There are dishes that go viral because an influencer photographed them. And then there are dishes that go viral because they simply can't help it — because the idea is so good it spreads itself. The Cacio e Pepe nel Frico di Parmigiano at Roma Sparita is the latter.

Imagine: a bowl made of fried Parmesan — crispy, paper-thin, golden. Inside: fresh pasta with classic Cacio e Pepe sauce — silky, peppery, intense. You eat the pasta. Then you eat the bowl. Every bite has a different texture, a different flavour — but they complement each other perfectly. This is not a gimmick. This is genius.