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Testaccio, Garbatella and the quarters out east.
Testaccio holds the market counters, the two rooms on Via di Monte Testaccio for the offal and the cacio e pepe, and the pizzeria on its square. Everything after it, Ostiense, Garbatella, Appio-Latino, San Lorenzo and Centocelle, is where the cooks who changed this city in the last decade actually opened, and the tram and the metro reach all of it. This is one long arc out from the market, in the order the rooms make sense.
Testaccio comes first and gets three sections. The market counters shut after lunch, the two rooms on Via di Monte Testaccio answer for the offal and the cacio e pepe, and the pizzeria on the square opens only at night. Ostiense and Garbatella come next, twenty minutes on, where the enoteca opens before the kitchens and the evening properly starts. Appio-Latino after that holds two of the hardest bookings in the city and holds them for opposite reasons. San Lorenzo and Centocelle sit at the far end and are a second trip rather than a first.
Testaccio starts at the market and the market shuts after lunch.
Testaccio works to market hours. That single fact decides how you visit: the counters trade in the morning and close after lunch, and the pizzeria on the main square opens only at night. Come at midday for the standing food and come back after dark for a table.
- Mordi e VaiTestaccio · $
A family of ex-butchers filling rolls with the cuts a sandwich counter would not touch, inside the market, before it shuts.
- TrapizzinoTestaccio · $
The counter two minutes away where a trattoria sauce first went inside a pocket of pizza dough, and the shape spread from here.
- Piatto RomanoTestaccio · $$
A short walk from the market, and Katie Parla's pick for vegetables, with the pajata on the same card.
- Bar GiolittiTestaccio
Bar Giolitti serves zabaione as a scoop of gelato, a semifreddo or a spoonful in your espresso, and coffee under a euro. It shuts on Sunday.
Make a walk of it
Take box 15 in the market first, then the trapizzino counter on Via Giovanni Branca on the way out.
The two rooms on Via di Monte Testaccio cook the offal and the cacio e pepe.
Via di Monte Testaccio runs past the gate of the old slaughterhouse, and its two rooms answer for the two dishes a cook from elsewhere in the city comes to Testaccio to eat. Checchino faces the gate and cooks the offal the slaughterhouse workers were once paid in. Flavio, under Monte dei Cocci, cooks the cacio e pepe Gabriele Gervasi of Il Ristorante Niko Romito rates first in Rome. Go at lunch on a weekday, the hour Katie Parla recommends for Flavio's crowded room.
- Checchino dal 1887
The rigatoni con la pajata Gervasi calls the best in Rome, then the coda alla vaccinara. It shuts on Monday and Tuesday.
- Flavio al Velavevodetto
Gervasi's cacio e pepe, then the fried polpette di bollito. It opens every day, and the room is enormous.
The same quarter after dark is a different set of rooms.
The evening half of Testaccio is a square and the streets off it, and the two arguments it settles are the Roman round and the cacio e pepe. Neither takes long and neither costs much. What matters is the order: the fried things first, then one plate, then stop.
- Da RemoTestaccio · $
It takes no bookings, and Time Out put a meal on the main square at ten to fifteen euros a head in May 2025.
- Felice a TestaccioTestaccio · $$
The sit-down evening on Via Mastro Giorgio, and the cacio e pepe is finished at your table. It shuts on Sunday.
- Pecorino
The quarter's Sunday lunch, for artichokes fried alla giudia, folded through maltagliati and braised with garlic and mint.
Ostiense and Garbatella are the next stop and they run late.
Cross the railway and the quarters turn residential. Ostiense has the trattoria that outgrew its own street, and Garbatella has the wine bar Sarah Cicolini sends you to. Give it an evening: start at the enoteca as it opens, then eat.
- Trattoria PennestriOstiense · $$
MICHELIN writes that this Ostiense room's reputation has carried well beyond its streets. Book a week ahead, by telephone only.
- Enoteca La MescitaGarbatella · $$
The Garbatella wine bar where the staff pick the bottle, open from the early evening and later at the weekend.
- TreccaAppio-Latino · $$
Between Garbatella and San Paolo, four metro stops from the Colosseum, and the offal is what the brothers built it for.
Make a walk of it
One evening, south: a glass at La Mescita in Garbatella as it opens, then Trecca for the pajata and the carbonara.
Appio-Latino has the two rooms the rest of the city books.
Two kitchens in one residential quarter do more for the Roman argument than most of the centre. One has cooked the same card since 1968 and still does not print a menu. The other moved half a kilometre in 2025 and was promoted to the top of Italy's own guide eight months later. They are twenty minutes from the Colosseum and neither is a walk-in. Plan either as the evening rather than a stop on the way to one.
- SantoPalatoAppio-Latino · $$
Sarah Cicolini built the kitchen on the offal cuts, and the day's dishes go up on a glass blackboard.
- Domenico dal 1968Appio-Latino · $$
No printed menu at all, one family since 1968, and both artichokes on the same card when they are in season.
San Lorenzo and Centocelle are the far end and worth the ride.
The eastern quarters are where two of the most interesting rooms in Rome sit, and both of them chose to be out there. One pizzaiolo stayed in Centocelle while people told him to move downtown; one couple shut a twelve-seat room, waited five years and reopened closer in but on their own terms. Neither is a casual decision on a short trip, and both are the right call on a second one.
- 180g Pizzeria RomanaCentocelle · $$
Dinner only, booked well ahead, and the marinara is what Sarah Cicolini orders.
- MazzoCentocelle · $$
Reopened in San Lorenzo after five years shut, with a porthole into the kitchen and the fried tripe first on the card.
Jeff's take.
Of the rooms in these quarters, SantoPalato is the one on my saved list for Rome. It is saved with no note.
How this was written
Composed from the sourced entries. Every room here has its own sourced entry, and nothing on this page adds a fact that is not on one of them. Last read through Sep 2026.