Taverna Trilussa serves really good traditional Roman food simply cooked in a rustic setting. In short, it’s a great place to go if you’re looking for something local. I think the highlight was definitely the pasta, which is served straight out of the pan.

After some disappointing eating experiences in Rome, I knew that I had to rely on a local. Taverna Trilussa was recommended by a friend knowing that we wanted something that would be uniquely Roman as we would be going to the rest of Italy in the coming weeks. The Taverna is located behind Piazza Trilussa in the Trastevere area of Rome – an easy walk over the Tiber River and just off the Sisto Bridge.

I couldn’t be happier – I’d been looking forward to a good cacio e pepe (cheese and black pepper) pasta for weeks. When we walked into the restaurant, there was a table full of the appetisers and cheeses on display. We chose to start with a good looking culatello (best part of the parma ham) and huge artichokes. In addition, we tried the puntarella, which is a variant of chicory, and a popular Roman vegetable.  The artichoke was grilled and dressed with a house specialty pesto sauce. The puntarella was tossed in anchovies.

We decided to try three pasta. The Tonnarelli Cacio e Pepe and two bucatini. The Bucatini all’Amatriciana is said to be Rome’s best known pasta – essentially bucatini pasta in a tomato sauce with guanciale bacon and Pecorino cheese. The other – the Bucatini alla Gricia is known as the poor man’s version of the Bucatini all’Amatriciana as it doesn’t contain any tomato sauce. Between the three my favourite ended up being the Bucatini all Gricia. It was the crunchy bits of bacon that sealed the deal.

When we ordered our meal we felt that we should at least have some meat although we weren’t really that hungry (our fault – we had cheese at a mozzarella bar before dinner). So we ended with a Coda alla Vaccinara, which is oxtail stewed in a tomato sauce that also contained raisins, pine nuts and chocolate. This was very good although to me, the pasta was still the standout.

We weren’t very adventurous with our desserts at the end of the meal. I didn’t have any while my friends had affogato. But if I had room, I would definitely have gone for the cheeses. These looked really amazing.

The meal was very reasonable as well. While we didn’t have a lot of the higher priced second courses (meat), we still ate well for less than EUR45 per person including two bottles of red wine. We had a Masciarelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and a Falesco ‘Tellus’ Syrah Lazio. Both wines were relatively affordable at around EUR20-EUR30 per bottle.

For more info on Taverna Trilussa (website partially in english): http://www.tavernatrilussa.it