There is no doubt that carbonara has curiously become one of the symbolic dishes of Roman gastronomy, but its fame has extended far beyond the walls of Rome, becoming an emblem of national cuisine.

While in its first decades of life, this recipe had plenty of experimentation and extreme freedom of interpretation, in the last twenty years there has been an evolution that led carbonara towards a reduction. 5 fundamental ingredients: pasta, eggs, bacon, pecorino, and pepper, with very few exceptions. Beyond these basic products, there is no real official recipe, but different methods of execution that aim to obtain a cream composed of egg, cheese, water, and bacon fat that delicately envelops the dough and the crispy bacon. Perfection is on the razor’s edge of balance in a very simple recipe with many pitfalls.

The quality of the carbonara depends in part on the selection of raw ingredients, while in the kitchen it ranges from the shape of the pasta to the proportions between yolk and egg white, from the type of cheese (pecorino in purity or mixed with other cheeses), cut and browning the bacon, up to the type of pepper to be used.

We compiled a list of restaurants and taverns and arranged them in no particular order, as they are all very delicious!

*Keep in mind that the prices we display may have changed to date.

Golden Grape Hosteria

Antonello Magliari, chef and patron of the restaurant, uses a medium-sized spaghetti from Giuseppe Cocco which is drained al dente and put in a pan with the browned King Butcher’s guanciale. It is then cut into well-browned square pieces to which he adds only the egg yolk and Pecorino Romano Dop Deroma. A little pepper and a final sprinkling of cheese for a tasty, well-mixed, and balanced carbonara.

Price: 12 euro

Piazza della Cancelleria, 80 – www.hosteriagrappolodoro.it

Pipero Rome

Alessandro Pipero is the patron and, in the kitchen, there is the talented chef Ciro Scamardella who offers a carbonara that combines strong taste and refinement. The attention to detail begins with the choice of pasta: Mezze Maniche Striped that the Graziano pasta factory produces expressly for Pipero’s cuisine, the Guanciale Re Norcino, ending with Pecorino Romano Dop mixed with 30% Parmesan for a soft on the palate. The cream of a particularly intense yellow color is obtained from egg yolks only, mixed with cheese and part of the bacon fat which gives it a savory and enveloping taste and a particularly smooth consistency, also obtained by cooking the sauce at low temperatures. The guanciale, cut into generous cubes, is browned in a pan, releasing all its potential for aromas and giving great satisfaction when chewed. A carbonara that is simple and complex at the same time, with a particularly refined cut.

Price: 32 euro

Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 250 – www.piperoroma.it

Trecca – Market cuisine

The brothers Manuel and Nicolò Treccastelli are the chefs and owners of Trecca, a trattoria with a solid Roman gastronomic imprint in constant search for new solutions and an approach to ingredients based on environmental sustainability.

The carbonara has an excellent silkiness to the cream, well balanced in all its components, where a strong hint of egg prevails calibrated by the flavor of the pecorino and the sweetness of the crispy bacon. The rigatoni is from the Lagano pasta factory, the eggs come from Livorno hens raised by the Pulicaro organic farm, while the guanciale is from Porchetteria Giorgini, two small producers who are part of the Agricultural Brigade, a project that brings together some producers who are particularly attentive to ethics and to environmental sustainability. Pecorino Romano from the Deroma dairy of the Dol chain (Origin from Lazio) is the only Dop produced in the province of Rome. For his carbonara, Manuel Trecastelli uses a mixture of egg yolks with a part of egg whites (but the search for the perfect percentage is still ongoing, he explains), pure pecorino, and browned guanciale which are mixed directly with the pasta in a warm pan to make the perfect texture. To finish, a sprinkling of pecorino and a pinch of black pepper.

Price: 10 euro

via A. Severo, 222 – 06 88650867

Cestius tavern

The owner Valerio Salvi represents the third generation of the family at the helm of the Taverna Cestia, while the solid Ezio Vitullo works in the kitchen. The rigatoni from the Le Gemme del Vesuvio company go well with this carbonara in the name of tradition with whole egg, Pecorino Romano Dop, and seasoned bacon from the Sano salami factory in Amatrice, all worked directly in the pan. The paste is perfect: tenacious at the right point, and excellent when chewed. The guanciale cut into rather thin strips is slightly too crunchy, but balances out with the soft and well-executed egg and pecorino cream, with a strong hint of pecorino which is also sprinkled abundantly on the finished dish, giving a strong character to this excellent bacon and egg.

Price: 10 euro

Ostiense – avenue of the Pyramid of Cestius, 71 – www.tavernacestia.com

Armando al Pantheon

Fabrizio and Claudio Gargioli are the owners of this historic Roman restaurant where chef William Moran has been in the kitchen for 25 years. Armando’s carbonara starts with spaghetti from the Martelli pasta factory, bacon from a small Viterbo producer, a whole egg from the San Bartolomeo company, black-skinned pecorino from the Lopez dairy with a small percentage of Parmesan, cubeb pepper that is toasted and crumbled grossly. The carbonara is made directly in a pan with eggs, bacon, and Parmesan, while the abundant pecorino is added to the dish only at the end. This characteristic conveys a truly “genuine” taste to the dish, even if the general impression is that it remains a bit extraneous to the composition. The pasta, halfway between spaghetti and spaghettone, is kept very al dente, almost al dente, while the guanciale is slightly salty despite the rather light toasting.

Price: 14 euro

Salita de’ Crescenzi, 31 – www.armandoalpantheon.it