RST's Favorite 2015 Rome Restaurants - i.e., Trattorie

The bustling front dining room at Betto e Mary; not sure about the stuffed animal cow and her scarf.  Perhaps someone
will come forth with an explanation.  And the server?  She's the talking menu.

With the usual caveat that we are not foodies, we are taking a break from all that architecture to provide notes on places in Rome where we enjoyed eating this past year.  RST likes to graze, we must admit.  We like small plates; we don't like to be fussed over.  So if you are into high-tone culinary experiences, you probably should not read on (as you also can deduce from the photo above).  But if you like a casual meal, with no or few tourists around, and excellent classic Roman dishes, check out the 3 trattorie below - in a variety of neighborhoods: Monteverde Vecchio, Flaminio, and Tor Pignattara.  We'll take on 4 even more casual places in a subsequent post.

In a covered outside dining area at Betto e Mary - where you
are likely to sit without a reservation (and it's very pleasant).

We've previously mentioned Betto e Mary in the Tor Pignattara neighborhood.  We've enjoyed it partly because it's close to one of our favorite galleries, Wunderkammern.  And the area is known for high-quality wall art. The walk from Wunderkammern to the restaurant will give you a great sampling of that art (check out the StreetArtRoma app - the app is much better than the Web site - for excellent directions).

For those in search of a non-tourist experience, you can't do better than Betto e Mary.  I can't recall how we came to know about it, because you won't find it easily.  It does have many (high) ratings on Yelp and TripAdvisor (the latter spells the name incorrectly) which I checked after we'd been there a couple times.  And I only found out from reading an article in Men's Journal that it's considered a "communist" restaurant (that means apparently only that it's for locals, not businessmen).

Our 26 Euro bill at Betto e Mary was so low,
 we took a photo of it.  And when we paid it,
someone rang a bell and shouted
 "Mancia! mancia!" (tip! tip!)

You probably need a bit of Italian to get by, or be willing to take your chances on, e.g., horsemeat, innards.  The available dishes are described to you by your server; that's it. You can take a look at the (Italian) Facebook page for photos of some of the offerings.  To get to the restaurant, take the #1 tram from the side of Termini or from Porta Maggiore to either the Filarete or Tor Pignattara stop and follow a map or gps from there - it's only a couple blocks.  DON'T follow the Men's Journal advice to take the Metro to Villa Medici and ask! And, although not far from Pigneto, Betto e Mary is not really in Pigneto.  Address: Via dei Savorgnan, 99, 00176 Rome; tel. 0664771096.  I also don't think the open and closing hours are accurate in Men's Journal.

Early in the evening at Lo Sgobbone, before it filled up.

The outside tables are popular at Lo Sgobbone.

Second up, Lo Sgobbone, in our Flaminio neighborhood last year. As I said in my review on TripAdviser, I had to be talked into going in the first place, because the outside awning was so dirty, I didn't trust it. But Bill prevailed, and he was right. Terrific (clean inside) local trattoria, and few tourists. This restaurant isn't too far from MAXXI or from Foro Italico, if you are doing either of those sites. Lo Sgobbone features the usual Italian dishes - we had an excellent spaghetti (billed as tagliolini but it was spaghetti) with fresh artichokes...gotta keep eating them as long as they are in season, and a very good roast veal - large portions. I also ordered the fresh asparagus "a piacere" - prepared as I wished, and I wished with butter and parmesan.  A delicious large plateful was $10 and worth it.  The house white is from Pitigliano in SE Tuscany - an area we love - and perfectly serviceable.  You are given a 1 liter bottle and you pay for "a consumiano" - what you consume.

The awning, Dianne's objection, looks better at night.

We were too full to try the desserts, but they looked terrific, and the Italians around us were not holding back.  For us, this is so much better than Anthony Bourdain's Cacio e Pepe in Prati, or Katie Parla's favorite Cesare al Casaletto (sorry, Katie, usually we think you are spot on and we recommend you every time, but we can't agree on this one).  Bill is loathe to check any other reviews before we go to a restaurant, and he's often proven right - they lead one astray.  I checked Lo Sgobbone only after we went, assuming no one had discovered it, and it shows up with excellent ratings on both Yelp and TripAdviser.  Lo Sgobbone, btw, appears to mean a hard worker, but with a negative connotation (leave it to the Italians!). Via dei Podesti, 10 (between the Lungotevere Flaminio and viale Pinturicchio; near Ponte della Musica), tel: 06 3232994.  And nice photos on the Italian Facebook page.

Third, Tutto Qua!, in the Monteverde Vecchio neighborhood.  This is tinier than the two trattorie above, and more upscale in cuisine and price, but still reasonable.  It's not your classic Italian trattoria, in other words, but it usually has several classics on the menu.  I love the atmosphere, the creative menu, and the presentation.  The wine list is also good, especially for such a small spot.  You can see more photos on Tutto Qua!'s (Italian) Web site and  Facebook.  It's much praised on TripAdvisor (Yelp hasn't discovered it yet).  One drawback: you usually need a reservation.  Our phone number was taken down incorrectly and when the owner couldn't reach us the day before, he cancelled our reservation. So be careful when you reserve a table.  A few outside tables in season, as well (also subject to reservations).  Via Barrilli 66 (via Barrilli turns into via Carini), not far from Il Vascello Theater. tel: 06 580 3649.

Outside, looking in, at Tutto Qua! in Monteverde Vecchio.

We didn't include RST's favorite restaurant in Rome, Mithos, La taverna dell'allegria, because we've written about it many times.  Check out the Facebook site  to see if you can stay away.

And now it's time for some Buffalo wings (when in Buffalo we live 3 blocks from where they were first concocted - Frank and Teresa's Anchor Bar).

Dianne

The Ponte della Musica: Update, 2015

Ponte della Musica, much busier than usual on a soccer night.  The Stadio Olimpico is close by.  Monte Mario in the background.  View from our apartment.  Skateboarding space below left.  

The Ponte della Musica (2011) sits astride the Tevere at the big bulge of the Flaminio quartiere, with Monte Mario (straight ahead), Olympic Stadium (up river) and Prati (down river).  We wrote about the bridge two years ago, ambivalently, praising the elegance of its white, skeletal, curving plasticity while questioning its originality, noting its resemblance to two much older bridges, the Bac da Roda bridge in Barcelona (1987) and the Valencia bridge (1995), both by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.  Although we found the bridge more useful than did some critics, we subtitled that first piece "the bridge to nowhere."

Today we offer a different "angle" on the bridge, both figuratively and literally.  In June of this year we lived on the 6th floor of one of four 1930s-era apartment houses on Piazza Gentile da Fabriano, with an enormous terrace that overlooked the Ponte.  No one in Rome lives closer to the bridge, or has a better view.

The city, and the Alban Hills beyond, at dusk from Lo Zodiaco on Monte Mario.  The white triangle, center right in the distance, is Calatrava's unfinished swimming pool. 

French military cemetery.

From that position--unusual and privileged, we understand--we thoroughly enjoyed the access the bridge offered.  We hiked up Monte Mario (400 feet vertical) at least four times, enjoying the views of St. Peter's, the stunning views from the bar Lo Zodiaco, then dipping into the pleasures of new neighborhoods (Balduina and Trionfale) while discovering new sites (the amazing French military cemetery, Piazza Walter Rossi) and new paths on the mountain. All because of the Ponte.

We had cacio e pepe at Cacio e Pepe.

We also made several forays into Prati, whose northern end begins just downriver across the bridge. Piazza Mazzini, with its lovely fountain, came into our orbit, as did the jazz club Alexanderplatz and a guided tour of "liberty" architecture--all within walking distance of "our" bridge, and we enjoyed a well-known area restaurant, Cacio e Pepe (Dianne reviewed it not too positively for Tripadvisor), and two Lungotevere bars, one just across the Ponte, the other a long block south.  At the latter, and out for just a drink, we found live music and a free spread of food.

One of many brooding buildings in Prati.

That said, Prati--probed from the north, anyway--is not the most interesting or welcoming area.
Enormous, gloomy apartment houses--most built without provision for the commercial establishments that breathe life into a neighborhood--abound on Prati's north end, and its center is laced with block-long, deadening military establishments.  The southern end of Prati is lively and inviting, but it's also full of tourists--and it's a long walk (about 2 miles) from the Ponte della Musica.

Gymnast doing backflips for the camera.  

From our 6th-floor perch we also learned that the bridge is important for the activities it fosters, which take place on the bridge and under it.  Because the bridge is (for now) closed to motorized vehicles, and lies outside the regular tourist areas, it's open to a wider range of activities than the city's other pedestrian-only bridges.  It's used for photo shoots--some of them, at least, with a professional air--featuring groups of men with cameras taking pictures of dressed-up young women. One day we witnessed a small crew filming a gymnast doing backflips.

Exercise class. 

The wooden side walkways attract individuals and couples, reading, talking, contemplating, relaxing as they look out over the Tevere.  The wood walkways are also frequently used for yoga-like exercising, both by individuals and large, leader-led and organized groups. Joggers are frequent.

Dude dancing on the bridge.

The Ponte is also a performance space.  On one occasion, three young women posed for a male companion while standing on the end-of-bridge stanchions.  On another, we observed an aging
hipster, fresh from a physical confrontation with a nearby bar owner over an unpaid bill, break out into a strutting Michael Jackson-like moon dance.

Skateboarders--and graffiti

Below the main deck, skateboarders practice their skills on the large, flat concrete surface at the Ponte's Flaminio end, leaping on and off sleek granite benches that were likely not intended for that purpose.

Glass, broken cables, and a homeless man trying to sleep.

We enjoyed watching the skateboarders, but not everyone thinks they're a positive addition. In a letter published in La Repubblica, one citizen linked the skateboarders to the graffiti that mars the bridge, especially down below. Whether there's a connection or not we can't say, but there's no doubt that graffiti--and more generally, the destructive behavior of young people--is a problem below the deck, where ugly tagging mars the walls and broken beer bottles litter the stairways.  A homeless man was sleeping under the bridge.  Some of the wire cables that form the sides of the stairways were broken.  Graffiti has begun to appear on the vertical bridge supports on the upper level, though someone--most likely the city--painted over it during our June stay (in a color that didn't quite match).

Scooter on the Ponte della Musica, a pedestrian bridge.

The serenity of the bridge's main deck was interrupted on two occasions that we observed, when motorscooters violated the law and
used the bridge to cross the Tevere.  On one occasion, a young man of about 14, dressed in what might be described as the uniform of a junior police officer--or some kind of boy scout--upbraided the offending moto rider--who, apparently nonplussed, proceeded across the bridge.


And so it goes, at the Ponte della Musica.

Bill

Evening romance on the Ponte della Musica.  

Calatrava's Guardrail: The Architectural Trail

It’s only a guardrail.  It runs up a seldom-used stairway from the first to the second floor of the new market in Testaccio.  Curving and white, it drew our attention, and not only because it seemed so different from the brown, box-like building.  We were looking at Santiago Calatrava, the great Spanish architect.  No, he hadn’t designed this railing, or had a hand in the marketplace, for that matter. 

Calatrava's unfinished natatorium. 

But his imprint was there, nonetheless—and elsewhere in Rome, more obviously--even though his only Rome building, a natatorium for the University of Rome at Tor Vergata, sits unfinished in the weeds to the east of the city center.    

Calatrava's Bilbao bridge, 1997

Born in 1951, Calatrava was trained as both an architect and engineer, and it was as an engineering student that he was attracted to the work of the Swiss bridge engineer, Robert Maillart (1872-1940) and came to study under a disciple of Maillart’s, the famed bridge builder Christian Menn.  Through Menn and Maillart, Calatrava came to appreciate and explore the structural properties of materials, including steel, aluminum, concrete, glass and—later—carbon fiber.  In 1981, he completed a Ph.D. thesis whose title, “Concerning the Foldability of Spaceframes,” announced his growing interest in the possibilities of creating unique forms in space.

Calatrava's Bac de Roda bridge, Barcelona, 1987

Calatrava is self-consciously intellectual, and over the years, in speeches and interviews, he has articulated a broad range of cultural interests and influences: emotion (as opposed to reason—the paintings of Rothko are an example); rhythm and music; the human body and its movements and gestures (“the idea of breathing,” he said in a 2000 interview, “is astonishing….the idea that our fingers can move, the branches of trees or the waves of the water can move when the wind comes, are all astonishing ideas”); sculpture (he considers himself an architectural sculptor, and he admires the work of Rodan and Brancusi; painting (Cezanne, and especially Picasso); writers (the Russian Joseph Brodsky), and other architects (Frank Lloyd Wright [intuition producing the sublime, the poetic], Gaudi, Eero Saarinen). 

Calatrava's Valencia bridge, 1995

Calatrava is best known as designer of bridges, mostly skeletal and white structures with a curving plasticity.  Among his major works are the Bac de Roda bridge in Barcelona (1987), the Alamillo bridge in Seville (1992), the Valencia bridge for his home town (1995), and the Campo Volantin bridge in Bilbao (1997). 

These are ground-breaking structures, and it would seem absurd—even impossible—to connect them with the Testaccio market balustrade.  Impossible, that is, if there weren’t some way to demonstrate that Calatrava’s design aesthetics were penetrating and shaping the Rome architectural scene. 

Ponte della Musica (not Calatrava)

But there is.  In just a few years, two major bridges have been completed in Rome, and both demonstrate forcefully the influence of the Catalan architect.  One is Ponte Della Musica, which spans the Tevere north of Piazza del Popolo, in the quartiere of Flaminio.  

Ponte Ostiense (not Calatrava)

The other is Ponte Ostiense, which carries traffic over a rail and metro corridor just south of the Pyramid, on the city’s south side. 

Neither was designed by Santiago Calatrava, but both bear his mark. 

And so, too, does that guardrail. 

Bill

 We recommend the haiart interview with Calatrava at http://haiart.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/an-interview-with-santiago-calatrava/

Ponte Ostiense: Under Construction

Through a hole in the fence.

In October, we pulled the scooter off Via Ostiense for a quick look at another of Rome's new bridges.  We couldn't get all that close, but we did manage to get a good pic looking through a hole in the fence (right); another with the camera held over the fence (below); and a third of a big on-site posting listing everyone who was working on the project and a rendering of what it was supposed to look like when completed. 

Lots of lanes.

The new bridge, over the Metro tracks and the Roma-Lido railway, will connect the heavily-trafficked Circonvallazione Ostiense (with Garbatella to the south and Ostiense to the north) with Via Ostiense, a major north-south thoroughfare that runs right into the Pyramid.  That's fine, but the real purpose of the bridge is apparently to connect Via Cristoforo Colombo (an enormous highway heading to the ocean) on the east with Viale Marconi, on the west.  And to do that adequately will mean another bridge, this one to span the Tevere below the old, out-dated, over-used, but loved Ponte di Ferro ("Iron bridge", officially Ponte dell'Industria).

The Spine

On its west side, the bridge will touch down right next to the now-abandoned Magazzini Generali (General Storage Area--a now-abandoned massive market/wholesale distribution center), to be redesigned by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.  There is also a larger, visionary project involved, the brainchild of former mayor Walter Veltroni, something called the Citta' di Giovani (City of Youth), which imagines revitalizing Ostiense, an older industrial but already trendy area with bars, clubs, and restaurants catering to young people.  (Of course, the young folks already have started up their bars and clubs here, as we've reported - more than once.)  Apparently Koolhaas is in charge of the larger project. 

Elegant Curves

We would like to credit Koolhaas as the architect of the bridge, but no one is saying that, and the designer of the structure remains a mystery,  Nor does the bridge have a name, although it is sometimes referred to as the Ponte Ostiense.  Rome's commissioner of public works proudly announced that a bridge of this type--arches supported by steel wires was his description--would be a first for the city, and he may be right.  The structure is 240 meters from end to end, with 125 meters fully suspended.  Three vehicle lanes each direction (two of the six for public vehicles), and ample sidewalks for pedestrians. 

Ponte della Musica

We claim no expertise in bridge design, but we like the look of this one.  We would have liked it more had we not seen the new pedestrian (so far) Ponte della Musica (right), over the Tevere to the north, with its wavy curves fashioned from white tubing, not unlike the emerging Ponte Ostiense.  (See our earlier post on that bridge.) After all, we're in the era of the designer bridge--like the 1950s was the era of the glass skyscraper--and some of the designs, despite their obvious differences, have a similar look and style.  Not bad, just not "wow we haven't seen that before." 

Bill

Ponte della Musica: Rome's new Bridge to Nowhere

There's a new bridge in town.  Dianne says it's called the Ponte della Musica (music bridge), and I have no reason to doubt her, or hardly any.  The name makes sense because it was installed to link the new left-bank museum and music area of Flaminio-- consisting primarily of Zaha Hadid's monumental MAXXI (museum) and Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica (music park),  which looks downright humble next to Hadid's enormous concrete construction--with the right bank of the Tevere. 

Ponte della Musica, from the right bank.

We had never seen the bridge, but knew it to be controversial.  Some--not just "experts" but residents of the area--wonder why it was built at all, since it doesn't seem to connect to much of a neighborhood across the Tevere. Yet we found it worked in the Flaminio/Foro Italico itinerary of our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  More on the book at the end of this post.

Looking toward Monte Mario.  The center
surface is asphalt, the sides wooden planks.

Yes, the northern portion of Prati is at the left when one crosses, but straight ahead is the uninhabited rise of Monte Mario, and to the right (north) Olympic Stadium (where the soccer teams play) and an enormous fascist sports complex, built in the 1930s.  On our visit, the bridge appeared to be populated mostly by joggers--who also use the right bank of the Tevere here--whose running range has no doubt been greatly expanded by the structure.  Although the bridge is capable of accepting automobile traffic--not clear how much--at the moment it is open only to pedestrians.

A private athletic club on the Flaminio side.
Looks like it lost a tennis court or two.

Others have criticized the bridge for having wooden walkways (sure to weather poorly, and difficult if not impossible to clean when the graffiti writers land).  It's likely, too, that the private atheletic clubs that populate the banks of the Tevere on this part of the river lost some land in the process or had their luxurious--and, until one could walk out on this bridge, hidden--lairs revealed for the ordinary public to see and envy.

Ship ahoy!  Note the handrails, inspired by the
Queen Mary.

Still, we like this bridge, with its sleek, rolling, boat-like, naval look.  It may be Italy's bridge to nowhere, but it's elegant and sea-worthy, and it's about time something was done for runners.  Perhaps they should call it Ponte delle Joggers.
Bill

p.s.  One of our readers was disappointed that we hadn't included information on the bridge's architect/designer.  So...the bridge had its origins in a partnership between Davood Liaghat, who was chief bridge engineer
at the Buro Happold firm, and London architect
Kit Powell-Williams, who was working in Rome with
the engineering firm C. Lottie e Associati.  Buro
Happold won a design competition for the structure in 2000.

You can cross the bridge, and see much more, in the Flaminio/Foro Italico itinerary in our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.