The 9 best local restaurants in Rome

// where locals actually eat — updated September 2026

9 vetted neighbourhood spots in Rome, Italy — Roman Trattoria, Roman Deli-Restaurant, Roman Pizza al Taglio and Roman Neighbourhood and more, found through local word of mouth rather than a marketing budget. Da Enzo al 29 currently leads the Rome list at 4.8 (Roman Trattoria). Most of the list stays in the everyday price range locals eat at week to week. The 9 below earned the top pins for 2026.

14.8
Roman Trattoria
Da Enzo al 29
Da Enzo al 29 is a tiny Trastevere trattoria on Via dei Vascellari that held its ground while the neighbourhood filled with visitors. It is Roman cooking played straight: the classical pastas made the correct way, Roman vegetables when they are actually in season, ingredients chosen carefully enough that the simplicity holds up. The dining room is small — a handful of tables inside, a few more on the lane — which means queues, and the kitchen has never expanded to solve that. Around €28. Trastevere has lost a great deal to its own popularity; this is one of the addresses showing what the quarter's food used to be, and still can be.
Terrace: There is outdoor seating for warmer days.
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24.8
Roman Deli-Restaurant
Roscioli Salumeria
Roscioli Salumeria is a Roman deli-restaurant on Via dei Giubbonari where the salumi counter and the dining room are the same crowded space. The Roscioli family came to this corner of the Campo de' Fiori quarter as bakers in 1972, and the shop half still sets the tone: cured meats, cheeses and cured fish are chosen at the counter, then eaten a metre away at tables wedged between the shelves. Behind it all sits a cellar running to several thousand labels, which is why Romans treat a table here as somewhere to bring visitors rather than a quick lunch. Mains land around €35, and the carbonara is the dish most orders are built around.
Price: Typical main course around €35, ordered à la carte.
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34.8
Roman Pizza al Taglio
Pizzarium Bonci
Pizzarium is Gabriele Bonci's pizza al taglio counter on Via della Meloria, a few minutes from the Vatican walls and worth the detour. Al taglio means pizza baked in long trays, cut by eye and sold by weight — a Roman format Bonci pushed further than anyone, with long-fermented dough and toppings that change according to what the market delivers. There is a counter and effectively nowhere to sit; you eat standing on the pavement, which is how the format is meant to work. Around €10 fills you. It runs as a lunchtime proposition, and remains the single most influential thing to happen to Roman pizza this century.
Price: Typical main course around €10, ordered à la carte.
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44.7
Roman Neighbourhood
Osteria dell'Angelo
Osteria dell'Angelo runs on a fixed weekly rhythm in Prati — Via Giovanni Bettolo, Roman cooking, and a calendar that has barely moved in decades. Rome eats by the day of the week, and this osteria is the most literal expression of it: gnocchi on Thursday, salt cod on Friday, the rest of the week equally settled. There is no à la carte flourish and no seasonal reinvention, because the reliability is the point. Prati is a solid residential quarter north of the Vatican, and the room fills with people who live there and know the menu before they sit down. Around €25 for a full meal. Booking is essential, and the rules are the rules.
Price: Typical main course around €25, ordered à la carte.
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54.6
Roman Trattoria
Tonnarello
Tonnarello sits on Via della Paglia in Trastevere and does Roman trattoria cooking at volume — loud, generous and cheap. The room fills fast and spills onto tables outside on one of the prettiest streets in the quarter, which is much of the appeal: this is the version of a Roman dinner most people picture before they arrive. The menu stays with the city's own repertoire rather than reaching beyond it, so gricia and rigatoni all'amatriciana carry the kitchen, and portions are sized for sharing whether or not you meant to. Mains sit around €26, wine is poured by the litre, and nobody expects quiet.
Terrace: There is outdoor seating for warmer days.
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6
Regional
La Tavernaccia
Family-run since 1968, La Tavernaccia da Bruno cooks Roman and Lazio tradition on Via Giovanni da Castel Bolognese. The address sits past the Trastevere railway, in the Portuense fringe where the city turns residential and the restaurants answer to neighbours rather than to foot traffic. Nearly sixty years in, the kitchen still runs on the same premise: regional dishes built from suppliers chosen and kept, antipasti through to the traditional desserts, nothing reworked for effect. Five independent local sources list it. Mains sit around €18. It remains a single location, welcoming rather than refined, which is the whole point of a tavernaccia.
Price: Typical main course around €18, ordered à la carte.
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7
Regional
Hosteria Grappolo d'oro
A hosteria on Piazza della Cancelleria serving Roman cooking à la carte a few steps from Campo de' Fiori. Grappolo d'Oro occupies one of those central squares that most visitors cross without stopping, which has left the room to the regulars. The kitchen keeps to a hosteria's brief: seasonal Roman plates, a printed menu that changes rather than a fixed formula, and no ambition toward the tasting-menu tier. Six independent local sources recommend it alongside the national listings, an unusual combination for an address this close to the centre. Mains run around €18. Single location, family scale, no second branch anywhere.
Price: Typical main course around €18, ordered à la carte.
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8
La gatta mangiona
A Monteverde pizzeria on Via Federico Ozanam, far enough uphill from the centre that its dining room belongs to the quarter. La Gatta Mangiona — the greedy cat — has built its reputation on one thing done seriously: the dough, worked long and fired properly, and a pizza list that treats toppings as composition rather than inventory. It serves in the evenings only, which is what a pizzeria that cares about its oven tends to do. Single location, no branches, no brand extension. The room is plain, the crowd is local, and the pizza is the argument. Animals are not admitted inside.
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9
Italian
Cacio e pepe
A Prati trattoria on Via Giuseppe Avezzana that named itself after the dish Rome argues about most. Cacio e Pepe sits in the quiet grid behind Lepanto, a residential stretch where the tourist crowds thin out and the tables fill with people who live around the corner. The kitchen works the Roman canon straight: carbonara, amatriciana, pasta e fagioli, cooked the way the neighbourhood expects rather than the way a guidebook photographs. Seventeen independent local sources point here, which in a city this saturated says something. Mains land around €16, ordered à la carte, in a room that has never pretended to be anything grander than a trattoria.
Price: Typical main course around €16, ordered à la carte.
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