Ten good things I ate in Rome

Mostly gelato

Before I was a food and drink writer, way before, I was a wannabe travel writer. I backpacked around the world on a shoestring in my 30s and did a bit of rudimentary blogging as I went.

I think it was what made me realise I could write for a living if I put my mind to it.

But as you know, my mind is a monkey. I did put my mind to it for a bit, and people said they enjoyed reading it, and then I got distracted, then overwhelmed, then lost faith. It’s a familiar pattern I am still trying to learn how to break.

Anyway, when I wrote about travel, I kept finding myself writing about food.

For me, almost the entire point of travel is food. I think food teaches you more about a place than virtually anything else.

So, forgive this diversion from writing about Manchester. I spent too much time away from my home city in June to eat enough good stuff for a full roundup. I’ll roll a few favourite dishes over to July’s roundup.

Instead, let me tell you about some good things I ate on a short trip to Rome with me dad. Spoiler alert: it’s mostly gelato.

Read on for ten good things I ate in Rome in 2025:

Blackberry and Fior di Latte gelato from Giolitti (About a fiver)

After the disappointment of getting up early and skipping brekkie to try to get into the Colosseum without having pre-booked, and thus being turned away, we set about wandering instead. Gelato and a macchiato for breakfast, then. How can a day be deemed a failure after that? My dad’s face in the background says it all.

The week before, I had been in Conegliano Valdobbiadene learning about Prosecco (more on that soon), and I got some Rome tips from my new friend Giulia from the Consorzio. This place was one of them. One of the oldest gelaterias in Rome, it was established in the late 1800s, and I learned afterwards that this was where Audrey Hepburn got her gelato from in the film Roman Holiday. It’s massive and buzzy, but not just with tourists; on the next table to ours, a couple of Italian men in sharp suits talked business and smoked cigarettes. If you sit outside, it’s old-school table service from a dapper older gent, too.

Gelato options can be overwhelming. I usually go for something creamy with something fruity. This deeply pigmented, tart blackberry sorbet on a melting cushion of milky fior di latte was a perfect antidote to the billowing neon clouds of those gelato shops just round the corner amid the selfie-stick chaos of the Trevi fountain. It’s amazing what a five-min walk in the other direction uncovers.

Polpo alla catalana at Ristorante Crab (€24)

My lazy Google Maps research popped up a place called Crab just ten minutes from the Colosseum, but around the back, the opposite way you would naturally go. I got it into my head that it would be a cheap ‘n’ cheerful seafood shack; I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’d been pretty frugal on the trip so far, and we were glistening with sweat, and parched, so we succumbed to the air con and white tablecloths.

This, believe it or not, was Dad’s starter, which I valiantly helped him to eat (after I had polished off my own stuffed squid). I’m not sure mango usually plays a part in this dish, but its sweet tang sang alongside all the other fresh flavours. Precisely what you want to eat in a heatwave.

Basque cheesecake with Jerusalem artichoke and cedrata foam at RetroBottega (€11)

For a huge, energetic city, Rome doesn’t appear to have that many cool, edgy places to eat and drink. Of course, there is good food here if you swerve the laminated menus and blokes beckoning you in for yet more overpriced congealed carbonara. But actual cool stuff? I didn’t come up with much.

However, Retrobottega ticks all the boxes on the hipster restaurant checklist. Natural wine? Check. Lighting so low you need a phone torch to read the menu? Check. Menu only accessible via a QR code? Check. Cutlery in a kitchen-style drawer in the counter you are sitting at, meaning you have to stand up and step back to get at it, but some bloke is manspreading next to you so badly that the drawer won’t open so the waiter has to sheepishly bring your cutlery to you like in a normal restaurant? Erm, check.

There are two large communal tables and six seats at the pass in this tiny, warren-like wine bar/restaurant. We hadn’t booked, so we got to gawp at the chefs plating up from our high, swivelly stools at a counter in a narrow corridor. It wasn’t my dad’s natural habitat, but he thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle.

The wine list was interesting, and our waiter was super helpful finding us something we would enjoy; for me, a brick-red, hefty-tannined orange wine and a light, rose-scented number made from one of the many red Italian grapes I was yet to become acquainted with. Big reds all round for Dad as standard (“Do you have any Merlot?”).

The food was inventive, but not too weird for weird’s sake. I cannot walk past a Jerusalem artichoke on the street without wolf-whistling. So while I am sceptical of perfectly good classic desserts being given a ‘twist’ with some bizarre ingredient, I had to try this. And Boy George, it works! Something about the caramelised sweetness of the artichoke creates such umami magic in a Basque cheesecake that I am probably going to try and recreate it. That or I’ll page Julian Pizer.

Fish tartare with ‘gazpacho’ at Bottega Tredici (€20)

Wandering ‘home’ to our hotel in Trastevere after another 20k-step day of meandering the big city and trying not to get run over, we fancied a cold glass of wine and something light to eat. We stumbled across this place, and the waiter looked at us like we were insane when we ordered just three tiny snacks and a plate of tartare to share.

Turns out, it’s quite the fancy spot, tasting menu vibes, but the option was there to graze, so we took it. Despite looking like something cobbled together in desperation from raw chicken and leftover sauces from the back of the fridge, this fish tartare was clean, cool and packed with the flavour of those ripe tomatoes and impossibly fragrant herbs the like of which you only find in the Mediterranean.

Suppli at Suppli (€3 a piece)

One of my favourite things in the culinary world is finding places that do just one thing really well. It doesn’t seem to happen much here in the UK, especially these days, when everything is such a financial risk. I’ll never forget a deep bowl of noodles with barbecued pork eaten while sitting on a blue plastic stool so small my boobs were resting on my knees in a back street of Hanoi. Sexagenarian lady at the stove, cooking that one dish fastidiously for decades, probably.

Suppli just does Roman suppli, small, deep-fried rice balls stuffed with cheese and other gubbins. Like a smaller, rounder version of the Sicilian arancini. There are a bunch of flavour options chalked up on a board, along with a handful of salads - in case a deep-fried ball and a cold beer ain’t nutritious enough for your delicate disposition. This is a tiny spot, covered in graffiti, with barely there service. If you want to feel like an awkward, out-of-place lump of a Brit, this will get you your kicks.

Gelato from Fiordiluna, Trastevere (about a fiver)

I am a sucker for an unusual flavour, especially when it comes to gelato. This basil and lemon sorbet was just shy of tasting like frozen pesto, make of that what you will. However, the scoop you can’t really see, underneath the basilica, is zabaglione flavour. A rich egg custard pepped up with a splash of Marsala. Unbelievably good stuff from a tucked-away artisan gelato spot in Trastevere from the award-winning gelato master, Eugenio Morron.

Deep-fried sushi with crispy onions and scamorza affumicata at Somo (€14)

I know this is sacrilege. Deep-frying sushi is very far from its original premise, although I think it does exist in Japan here and there.

Somo is a contemporary Japanese-Roman fusion spot, just outside Trastevere in a neighbourhood called Monteverde, which was refreshingly devoid of tourists (except us, lol). Most of the sushi we tried here was not deep-fried, although it was all a bit ‘experimental’. I liked it all, some more than others, but this one, recommended by one of the lovely servers, was my fave. Something about that smoked mozzarella oozing within the compacted rice and crispy exterior, almost like a suppli, I suppose. Fusion is always weird, but sometimes it works and it’s fun and delicious, so let’s not clutch our pearls, eh? There are bigger things to worry about.

Diavolo pizza from I Matti pizzeria, Pompeii (About €8)

Probably the best pizza I have ever eaten; partly because, well, just look at it, and partly because of the context.

Firstly, this was not in Rome. But it was while I was in Rome that I went to Pompeii. I had never been before and had no idea what to expect (apart from the obvious). I had no idea how huge the place was, nor that once you are in there, you can’t go back out.

We had skipped breakfast (again) to get to the train station early. I had earmarked a couple of pizza spots on the map, assuming we could mooch around the archaeological wonder for a bit, go out, get lunch, and then back in and carry on mooching. Not an option. The only option for sustenance turned out to be a handful of cafes within the ancient ruins themselves. Google Maps showed them as all having less than 2-star reviews. We tried not to go to them, but the hangriness kicked in, and we wanted coffee, so we dragged our sweaty bodies and sore feet to one of them, only to find it closed. We had to steel ourselves, stay hydrated (thank god for water fountains) and do Pompeii for several hours in the hot, hot heat on no food or caffeine. Friends, it was tough. Did I mention, it’s fucking massive?

We didn’t ‘complete’ Pompeii. Who can in, like, five hours? If you haven’t been, my advice is to do it over two days and probably not on a day trip from Rome. It was amazing, and I’m glad we did it, but lessons were learned.

There are multiple exits from the ruins. I persuaded my broken-down and defeated old dad to leave via the furthest one to the meeting point for our coach back to the train station, so we could go via a pizza spot. He was far from enthused. That is until we parked our arses on a bench halfway on our walk back, opened up the takeaway pizza boxes and beheld this wonder.

We tore at the soft, leopard-spotted crust, rolled up stringy strands of mozzarella and crisp salami into bready tubes and shovelled it into our mouths as the red oil dribbled down our forearms. It was a great pizza, made greater by our feral hunger and exhaustion. One of those travel moments you’ll never forget.

Various slices of Roman pizza from Alice, Trastevere (About €4 for all of that)

I had to get some Roman pizza, ‘when in Rome’, even though it’s not my preferred type. It’s too ‘dry’ for me usually. Alice, a place on the same street as our hotel, offering by-the-slice pizza cut to any size you wish, came highly recommended. We grabbed this just before jumping into a taxi to the airport and ate it lukewarm on a bench outside the terminal before checking in. I actually really enjoyed the crispy base, especially contrasted with white sauce and earthy mushrooms. Another example of a simple, specialised dish done really well. Unbelievably good value too.

Parmagiano Reggiano gelato from Venchi at Fiumicino Airport (About €5)

One final gelato hit at one of Europe’s sexiest airports, Fiumicino. How could I not order Parmesan ice cream? I genuinely loved the combination of salty cheese folded into sweet milky ice cream. Factor a stop at Venchi into your airport plans if you are ever flying out of here. They do normal flavours too, if you’re boring.