Best Restaurant in Rome - Mithos La Taverna dell'Allegria

Interior - looking towards one set of room; there are more tables
in back of the camera view, but you can see the narrowness of
the restaurant here.

We have an easy to answer to the most asked question – what’s our favorite restaurant in Rome, and that’s Mithos – La Taverna dell’Allegria.  The food is amazingly good, at a reasonable price, and the ambiance is without a doubt charming yet understated.  The owner, Mario, is the perfect host.

But, we usually add, Mithos is out of the Centro a ways, and has no English menu.  For us, that’s a plus.  So is the fact that we found Mithos by simply stumbling across it when we lived in the neighborhood 5 years ago.  Then, Mario had a tiny restaurant – about 4 tables inside and the same outside (during the long outdoor season in Rome).  He would write up the menu in his (for us) hard to read handwriting about 7.30 p.m. and go next door to make a few copies.  We watched him do this prep work one evening when we arrived at what was supposed to be the opening time of 7 or 7.30 p.m. – but don’t count on the restaurant really opening before 8 p.m.  No self-respecting Roman would show up for dinner before dark, even in the summer.

About 2 years ago, Mario and his adult daughter and son took a leap of faith and tripled the size of the restaurant by moving into a longish storefront in the nearby Piazza Scipione Ammirato.  The décor features old sideboards, cupboards, kitchen tables and chairs, painted in muted Easter-egg hues, and all placed in a gracefully lit, modern infrastructure.  You can even watch the cooks at work in the kitchen.  The outdoor space is now available too, as you can see from the photos, and gives out onto a relatively quiet (esp. for Rome), recently spiffed-up piazza.

Mario in ubiquitous apron serving outdoor tables

So onto the food.  Mario still does a nightly menu and the selection is limited (4 or 5 pasta dishes, 4 or 5 entrées), but wide – fish, meats, vegetarian.  We love it all.  The seafood is amazingly fresh and good (“Zuppa di pesce,” for example), and the pastas perfectly cooked, interesting, and wonderful.  Mario’s daughter (Alessandra, as I recall) oversees the scrumptious desserts.  The Slow Food movement has found Mithos and sponsors events here, which tells you something.  The TripAdvisor reviews are all in Italian (except mine) and are almost all highly favorable. And, by the way, there is nothing Greek about the cuisine.  This is Italian to the core.

Two of us usually eat here for Euro 45, including wine.  Though those who choose a full menu will probably see a bill for 2 of Euro 60.  By Rome standards, this is a deal.

Sunday brunch menu

We chatted with Mario this summer about his expansion into pizza offerings and Sunday brunch (not a Roman custom).  We think, like many restaurateurs , he is trying to cover his costs, having expanded into the heart of the Great Recession which, you may have heard, is hitting Italy even harder than the U.S.  I wouldn't waste a trip to Mithos on pizza or omelets, but you may have different ideas. 

Okay – so is it worth a taxi ride out of the Centro and back?  It’s hard to justify a Euro 30 taxi each way for a max Euro 30 per person meal.  The Metro A stops of Ponte Lungo and Furio Camillo are at most a 10 minute walk from Mithos.  We recommend them.  You'll also get a feel for this very Roman suburban neighborhood.  Technically Mithos is in the Appio Latino quarter, but it also is very close (walking distance) to the Tuscolano quarter.  (If you must stay in the Centro, and are foodies, definitely go to Katie Parla's site, www.KatieParla.com, or her app for great recommendations.)

We almost always go to Mithos on one of our last nights in Rome each year, and we are never disappointed.  As we discover each time, it’s a romantic and delicious way to savor the Eternal City.

We recommend reservations.  Mithos is often full, even on weeknights.  tel: +39.067840034. Email (I've never tried it - but go for it) - info@mithostaverna.it.  Address:  Pizza Scipione Ammirato, 7.

Dianne

Eataly Opens Rome Store

Thursday, June 21: opening day at Rome’s Eataly.  Opening day, that is, for us ordinary folk; “i big” had their own opening a few days ago: the mayor was there, and the president of the province, and the president of the region, and the founder of the Italian Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini, and legendary pop star Gino Paoli, among others.   The pols were there because they can’t resist a spectacle, and Rome’s Eataly, the largest of 19 Eataly’s store-restaurants around the world, is just that: 17 thousand square meters of space, encompassing 23 eating places, 40 areas devoted to teaching about food, 8 spaces where they make mozzarella or fresh pasta or bread, 14,000 products for sale, hundreds of employees, an anticipated 6 million visitors per year.  They were there, too, to celebrate a project brought to fruition entirely with private funds.  Slow Food’s Petrini waxed eloquent on that issue, suggesting that Eataly would be a “permanent Olympics” for the area, without costing the city a cent.

That’s mostly true, but not entirely.  The building that houses Eataly was constructed with public funds.  It opened in 1989/90 as the Air Terminal Ostiense, first to handle the traffic from the 1990 World Cup, then as the place that would connect tourists and others arriving at Rome’s far-away Fiumicino Airport with the city of Rome.  Designed by Spanish architect Julio Lafuente in the grand, open, monumental style of Penn Station (now defunct) by way of the Baths of Caracalla, the postmodern structure fell on bad times from the beginning.  Travelers had difficulty finding taxis, carting their luggage over (or under) the broad set of tracks to the regular railway station, or getting to the Metro; everything was close as the crow flies, but humans with luggage could only wish they had wings.   It was not long before the station was abandoned for the purposes of the Fiumicino trade, and for at least a decade it remained empty.   The more recent chronology is a bit murky: in 2009 and 2010 the Air Terminal was used, unofficially, to house homeless Afghani refugees; in the former year it was purchased by the financiers of Eataly.    (Air Terminal Ostiense gets a brief mention in Rome the Second Time (the book) at page 68.)

While the powerful and yet playful exterior of Lafuente’s Air Terminal remains as he designed it, little—indeed, nothing—remains of the interior.  The enormous, open halls of the original have been filled in, 3 floors added. 

The spectacle remains, but it is of a different sort than Lafuente had in mind: rather than the spectacle of wondrous space, we have the spectacle of the 21^st century department store, the spectacle of goods and services, of fashion and design, or products and packaging, of color and choice. 

This is the spectacle of the worldwide furnishing giant IKEA, of an engaging, accessible, and sensible capitalism, there to make money, yes, but also to bring us what we need, what is best for us. 

Eataly, of course, is all about food.  But not just any food, and not just any Italian food.  Eataly comes with a 9-point Manifesto (perhaps 10 would seem too contrived).  Among its points: food unites people across lines of social class; high quality food improves one’s general quality of life; consumers should know the story, the history, behind the foods they consume; and high quality foods should be available at affordable prices (indeed, a recent advertisement promises, “At Eataly high quality costs half.”)  There’s a lot of emphasis on the importance of “what we put inside our bodies,” as opposed to the things outside, and lots of talk about their “passion” for providing  people with good food and how vital it is that people be “passionate” about what they eat.  Substitute “home furnishings” for “food” and you’ve pretty much got IKEA. 

Coffee bar

Fruits and vegetables, not a priority

There’s lots to think about here.  We know there’s some truth in the claim that the tensions of social class can melt away in the pleasures of a good meal.  But one of Eataly’s markets is the very affluent consumer.  At least one of its fourth-floor restaurants caters to the very rich, and posters announce series of 12 wine-tastings for 500 Euro.  It’s hard to disagree with the idea that what we put in our bodies is important.  But one of Eataly’s many food outlets sells pizza and another specializes in “fritti”—that is, deep fried foods, shrimp, calamari and meatballs (delicious – we know, we tried them) and other treats—that are very Roman but would seem low on the nutritional scale.   Most of the wines sold at Eataly contain suphites.  There’s a huge section devoted to the fatty meats—ham, mortadella, sausage—that Italians devour.   And the fruits and vegetables department, where the produce is displayed under canvas tents designed to suggest an old-fashioned market, is tiny.   

Lots of choice

We can’t really speak to the issue of whether the food available at Eataly is of “high quality,” or of higher quality than one can get elsewhere in Rome (that, after all, would be a sensible standard).  Moreover, how would one prove such a claim?  Mayor Gianni Alemanno, the conservative ex-thug not known for his cultured sensibilities, had no such doubts.  Eataly, he announced, is “launching a model where one says no to consumerism, but yes to the quality of what one consumes.”    

Eataly's shopping carts and fashionably-dressed
shopper

We have one more concern, possibly the most significant for Rome, and it emerges directly from the Eataly’s advertising.  “Already,” says the company, “many Romans have taken to doing all their grocery shopping at Eataly” (hanno presso a fare la spesa completa da Eataly).  If we thought that say, half of Eataly’s sales would be to tourists and foreigners, that would be one thing.  But we found only one sign of any kind in English, the common language of Rome tourism; everything’s in Italian—a good indication that that’s the key market.  If most of those customers are Romans, we can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen to the local meat markets, salumerie (essentially delis), and neighborhood markets that are now just holding their own against a growing number of small, chain grocers.  At bottom, Eataly is just a “big box” store—an attractive and enticing one to be sure—ready, like all big-box stores everywhere, to destroy the little guys.  That’s what they do. 

Eataly as spectacle

That's our view--and we're stickin' to it.  But it's a long-term perspective.  In the short term, we're less critical, more positive.  We like IKEA, and we've shopped there with some success and been proud of our self-assembly skills.  We can't resist the spectacle, even if it's just capitalism at its shiny new best. 

Supervisor (left) and employees try to figure
out how to serve us our fritti.  Opening day
jitters

We enjoyed our visit, marveling at the hundreds of brands of olive oil, figuring out when things were open (the restaurants close, Italian style, from 3 to 7 pm), impressed by the on-site beer-making, digging into the philosophy of the place, observing the young employees learning their jobs and the system, surprised that one could purchase "sfuso" wine (from the barrel, at E2 per bottle), taken by the rich, complex, postmodern interior of the place, photographing the photographers photograping the spectacle.  Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. 

Bill



How the Air Terminal Ostiense interior should have looked

We point out that Eataly was in 8 other cities in Italy before coming to Rome, and that in addition to its highly successful New York City operation, it has 7, soon to be 9 locations in Tokyo. Coming soon: Chicago, Los Angeles. 

Some sense of Lafuente's volume remains