How to avoid tourist restaurants in Rome!
Anglo-Saxons call them tourist traps. They are usually found downtown and next to the most visited visitor attractions in the Eternal City. They can be found at the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Colosseum and generally in the many areas of incredible beauty in Rome. Usually these tourist restaurants are decked out precisely to meet the imagination of the tourist discovering Rome: Red and white checkered tablecloths, stuffed wooden chairs, flasks of chianti on the table and braids of garlic hanging from ceilings and curtains. No shortage of photos of some Roman stars of the past, Alberto Sordi with a plate of “bucatini,” Aldo Fabrizi always with a big forkful of spaghetti.
They are not expensive restaurants, but the quality often leaves something to be desired, making them infrequent for Romans looking for a real trattoria where they can enjoy traditional dishes. Of course, the closer you get to the tourist attraction the more they are traps, to the point of exaggerated bills when they are located in the nerve centers.
How, then, to avoid tourist restaurants and find places to eat really well in downtown Rome?
There are two basic strategies to be able to find the right place, and they are also the strategies we Romans adopt both here in Rome, when we do not know the area well, and when we go outside the city. The Roman hardly gets inspired by “guides” either printed or online, even if there are the infamous “reviews,” and this is because … we do not give credit to “reviewers.”
The strategy:
Ask the Hotel Front Desk.
Yes it is true, it depends on the Hotels. Restaurant advice is not always “disinterested.” At Hotel Alpi we have a list of restaurants in our area that we have personally tried and feel confident in suggesting to our clients. Safe because it is important for us to take care of our customer, a wrong advice would damage our work and our welcoming spirit. Ideally, we receive a list of names from the front desk, and not just one 😉
Ask the locals
The final card is to ask “locals,” people who live or work in a specific area. This is what we do to get a good address, we close our cell phones with the nice stars and reviews and ask people. Who exactly do we ask? Well here you kind of do a little test…. You can ask the taxi driver, the newsstand or any store, a traffic cop, the question will be, “Where would you go to eat in this area to not find a tourist restaurant?”
We do this everywhere when we are in Italy or abroad. No one knows the local cuisine like … the local. And if we want to have a real dining experience … we recommend these strategies.
Extra Tip: Avoid restaurants with too large a menu, where there are pastas, pizzas, meat and fish main courses, etc.. Good restaurants are specialized! If there are too many dishes on the menu they are probably all prepared in advance….
