The Pasta Queen’s favorite cacio e pepe in Rome

The tacky, peppery pasta dish has grow to be as viral as chef Nadia Munno’s cooking movies. Listed here are her favorite locations to get it in her hometown of Rome.

For Roman chef and businesswoman Nadia Caterina Munno – higher identified to her 5 million-strong legion of social media followers as “The Pasta Queen” – the wealthy pasta dish of cacio e pepe, represents every little thing she loves about her hometown.

“Romans are loud, aggressive, however actually pleasant. Their friendliness is a type of love,” she says. “Roman delicacies is [also] very punchy and aggressive – up [in northern Italy], dishes are extra delicate – and cacio e pepe could be very historically Roman.”

Certainly, made by merely tossing pasta, Pecorino cheese, scorching pasta water and toasted black peppercorns collectively, cacio e pepe (actually: “‘cheese and pepper”) is Roman delicacies par excellence: humble, salty and spontaneous.

Lately, the dish has grow to be a agency favorite abroad, with eating places from New York to London proudly serving their variations of the savoury recipe. It has additionally grow to be one of many foremost stars of Munno’s larger-than-life dwelling cooking movies, that are peppered with a Sophia Loren-esque theatricality and replete with gushing references to the “pasta gods”.

Munno’s personal royal moniker might pose a quite grand declare, however she’s hardly a usurper: she heralds from a household that has been producing pasta for hundreds of years, even garnering the nickname of the “Macaronis”.

“To be a ‘pasta queen’ you must have an expertise and a background: these are the dishes I cooked all my life,” she explains. “I need to train individuals concerning the values of Italian meals, which deliver individuals collectively, to get pleasure from life a bit extra.”

She provides: “Meals should not be handled as an afterthought. Empires had been solid on meals.”

And although Rome’s historical past could also be imperial, cacio e pepe – very similar to different traditional Roman pasta dishes like carbonara and amatriciana – is a humble dish, deeply rooted within the metropolis’s working class tradition, with influences from the close by shepherds who moved to Rome from the Apennine mountains. What might come to a shock to some is that cacio e pepe shouldn’t be even some of the consumed dishes within the Roman kitchen. Its current reputation, Munno says, is essentially a product of social media advertising and marketing.

“It is not as wanted from Romans as from vacationers who come to go to town,” Munno notes. “It is positively conventional, however cacio e pepereally has gone viral, being popularised internationally.”

All this however, the dish is now a consolidated a part of Rome’s culinary repertoire, a staple in trattorie and household properties throughout town.

Listed here are Munno’s favorite locations to get cacio e pepe in Rome.

If there’s any restaurant in Rome which may legitimately lay declare to being the “king” of cacio e pepe, it is Felice a Testaccio – and Munno recommends going there to expertise the dish like a real native.

“I preferred going to [Felice a Testaccio] as a result of I grew up close by,” Munno says. “It is a spot which is common with the native individuals, and the meals is wonderful.”

For Felice a Testaccio, cacio e pepe is a veritable artform – and one whose creation is exhibited to purchasers, because the mantecatura (emulsification) of the pasta within the Pecorino cheese is carried out tableside.

Utilizing recent tonnarelli (thick spaghetti), Felice a Testaccio’s cacio e pepeis decadent, sharp and creamy, the Roman dish in its most luxurious type.

As its identify suggests, Felice is situated within the metropolis’s scruffy, vibrant Testaccio neighbourhood, which was constructed on the stays of an historic Roman trash heap and the port that serviced town with its meals. At present, the neighbourhood maintains its culinary custom as the placement of the monumental Testaccio meals market.

“It is one of many foremost markets of Rome,” Munno says.

The district, situated south of town centre, does not fairly reek of “dolce vita” within the postcard-perfect, Hollywood sense – assume much less Roman Vacation and extra graffitied partitions and post-war condominium blocks – nevertheless it’s as quintessentially Roman because it will get, and Munno recommends sinking your enamel into – and its meals.

“The world does not get sufficient love,” Munno says. “However it’s very Roman.”

The restaurant – opened close to the Campo de’ Fiori avenue market in 1972 and now a part of an area chain of bakeries and eateries – presents subtle, but nonetheless genuine, takes on traditional Roman and different Italian dishes, inside a sublime setting that pulls an unique clientele. Its elements are sourced from one of the best suppliers, and its cacio e pepe is not any exception.

“Roscioli is actually genuine Roman [food],” Munno says. “What they serve is actually wonderful.”

Utilizing recent tagliolini pasta, Nepalese black pepper and a contact of additional virgin olive oil to assist bind the sauce, Roscioli’s cacio e pepe is delicate and refined, but nonetheless filled with the tangy saltiness of the standard Roman recipe.

“It is extremely attractive,” Munno says.

Reserve prematurely, as bookings could be aggressive.

Hostaria da Cesare, which celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2021, brims with nostalgia, with a definite “frozen-in-time-feel”: a time capsule of what might appear to be a bygone period.

Heat, wood-panelled interiors give it a distinctly cosy, mid-century allure. Da Cesare’s cacio e pepe – one of many metropolis’s greatest, in keeping with Munno – is conventional and wealthy, made with spaghetti, coated in a flurry of shaved Pecorino and black pepper.

Conveniently positioned within the central Prati quarter, a sublime, Nineteenth-Century Parisian-esque grid of streets near the Vatican, Hostaria Da Cesare is centrally situated but in addition considerably shielded from the vacationer throngs.

“It is not significantly touristy, nevertheless it’s getting extra consideration,” Munno says.

Trattoria Da Teo does not really feel like an abnormal restaurant – it feels extra like a eating room a household graciously opened as much as the general public.

Deep within the Trastevere district south of the Vatican, Da Teo is about in a neighbourhood which – regardless of its reputation with vacationers – has preserved its medieval allure and a fierce neighborhood spirit.

“Trastevere is magical,” Munno says. “It is a loopy neighbourhood which supplies you a complete completely different expertise [and] power.”

“You’ve got individuals dancing, golf equipment, younger individuals, cats,” she provides. “The center and vibe of Rome.”

Munno believes Da Teo presents a style of Trastevere’s “intense, exhilarating Roman vibe” and recommends going there with a major different. “Going [there] with a lover is so romantic,” she says.

Tossed in an particularly thick, creamy homestyle sauce, Da Teo’s tackle the Roman dish feels much less like a restaurant serving and extra akin to one thing your nonna would whip you up for Sunday lunch.

Flavio al Veloavevodetto is maybe some of the distinctive eateries in a metropolis full of historic oddities, in that it’s situated fairly actually inside an historic Roman trash heap: the Monte Cocci, a hill made up of discarded amphorae (vases).

“It is an unbelievable expertise you’ll be able to’t get wherever else,” Munno says.

Despite its exceptional setting, the restaurant nonetheless makes easy, conventional meals for a largely native clientele – and, Munno notes, is a superb place to expertise dishes like cacio e pepe.

“[Flavio] has a typical household model,” Munno says. “It is not tremendous fancy. It is a spot for day-to-day Romans, a kind of locations you’ll be able to’t eat badly.”

Flavio al Veloavevodetto serves a cacio e pepe which, as Italians would say, is as dio comanda (God wills it) – utilizing thick tonnarelli and considerable Pecorino.

Whereas Flavio al Veloavevodetto’s flagship is in Testaccio, you can even expertise their creations over in a extra just lately opened department within the extra centrally situated Prati district. Munno nonetheless recommends the unique.

“Vacationers ought to come to expertise it,” she says.

BBC Journey‘s The SpeciaList is a sequence of guides to common and rising locations world wide, as seen by the eyes of native specialists and tastemakers.