What's the food culture in Rome?

Rome eats late and doesn't apologize for it. Breakfast is a cornetto — a crescent of buttery, slightly sweet dough, often filled with crema pasticcera or Nutella — eaten standing at the bar counter with a caffè (espresso, not drip) between 7 and 9am. This costs about €2.50 total. Lunch sits around 1pm and runs until 2:30, and most trattorias close the kitchen after that, reopening at 7:30 for dinner service that fills up closer to 9pm. Between lunch and dinner, the aperitivo window opens around 6pm: a Spritz or Negroni at a bar in Monti or Trastevere comes with a plate of olives, bruschetta, and chips for €8-12. Skip dinner entirely if the aperitivo spread is generous enough — some bars in San Lorenzo practically serve a full buffet with a single drink purchase.

Four pasta dishes define Roman cooking, all built from the same short ingredient list — guanciale (cured pork jowl, not pancetta), pecorino romano (sharp, salty sheep's cheese), black pepper, and eggs in various combinations. Carbonara uses egg yolks and guanciale. Cacio e pepe is just cheese and pepper, which sounds simple until you try to emulsify pecorino into a smooth sauce without it clumping into a greasy knot — ordering it tells you immediately whether a kitchen knows what it's doing. Amatriciana adds tomato. Gricia drops the egg. Da Enzo al 29 in Trastevere does a carbonara that's rich without being heavy, the egg still slightly loose when it arrives, but expect a 45-minute wait on weekends with no reservations accepted. Felice a Testaccio serves their cacio e pepe tableside on Thursdays, tossed in the wheel of cheese — theatrical, but the pasta is legitimately good. For amatriciana, Flavio al Velavevodetto in Testaccio cooks theirs with a deeper, slower tomato that tastes like it's been reducing since morning. Expect €10-14 per primo at any of these.

Supplì are Rome's fried rice balls — smaller and more oblong than Sicilian arancini, with tomato-braised rice wrapped around a molten mozzarella core that pulls into strings when you bite through the crisp shell. At €1.50-2.50 each they're the best cheap bite in the city. Supplizio near Campo de' Fiori does inventive versions, but the classic tomato-and-mozzarella at any decent friggitoria is hard to beat. Pizza al taglio — thick, airy, sold by weight from sheet pans — is the other Roman fast food worth building a day around. Pizzarium near the Vatican, run by Gabriele Bonci, sets the standard: the potato-and-mozzarella slice has a crust that's crispy and pillowy at the same time, and the toppings rotate daily. In the Jewish Ghetto along Via del Portico d'Ottavia, carciofi alla giudia — whole artichokes deep-fried until the outer leaves shatter like chips while the heart stays tender — are the dish to order. Nonna Betta and Ba'Ghetto both serve them well, though Nonna Betta tends to fry them crispier.

Mercato di Testaccio is where Romans actually shop. The covered market on Via Beniamino Franklin has produce vendors, a fish counter, and prepared-food stalls — Mordi e Vai does a bollito sandwich (slow-braised beef on crusty bread with salsa verde) that costs €5 and ruins all other sandwiches for you. The old Campo de' Fiori market still runs mornings but has drifted toward tourist pricing on pre-packaged truffle products and dried pasta gift sets; the produce is fine, the atmosphere less so. For eating, stay out of the immediate Colosseum and Trevi Fountain radius. Trastevere is on the edge — some streets now run on laminated multilingual menus and waiters pulling you in from the sidewalk, but one block off the main drag you'll still find places where the menu is handwritten and changes daily. Pigneto, east of Termini, is the current locals' pick — scruffier, cheaper, and the kind of neighborhood where restaurants haven't updated their facades since the 1970s. That's a good sign.

The tourist-trap markers in Rome are consistent: a photo menu displayed outside, a waiter standing on the sidewalk waving you in, and 'tourist menu' pricing at €12-15 for pasta that tastes like it came from a hotel buffet. The waiter-on-the-sidewalk test is close to perfectly reliable — any restaurant confident in its food doesn't need to recruit from the street. Reservations at the better trattorias usually work through direct phone calls in Italian, though Da Enzo, Roscioli, and a few others now take bookings through their websites or Google. Roscioli Salumeria on Via dei Giubbonari doubles as a wine bar and deli where you can eat cured meats and aged cheese at the counter — a useful fallback when you don't have a reservation and don't want to gamble on a walk-in. One more thing: never order cappuccino after 11am. Nobody will refuse to serve you, but you'll get a look.