My fourth restaurant report from our trip to Italy is of our first meal in Rome, at Santo Palato, a small, relatively new trattoria that serves up slightly tweaked versions of classic Roman dishes. Now this last part I am not really equipped to judge: I don’t know very much about Roman cuisine and so cannot tell you in what ways exactly the dishes we ate riffed on classic preparations (if all even did). What I can tell you is that this was a fantastic meal, perhaps the family’s consensus pick for the best formal meal of the trip; it was certainly my favourite meal of the trip. It almost got derailed on the way to the restaurant though…

What was it that went wrong? Well, we almost didn’t get there. This because we had naively assumed it would be very easy to get a cab and as it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth. We had a 7.30 reservation and left our flat at 7 pm, expecting to get there with ease. However, at 7.30 we had only slowly progressed a few hundred feet from our building, trying desperately and failing utterly to get any passing taxis to stop for us. Empty taxis passing by, taxis disgorging passengers: all waved us off contemptuously. We tried calling a couple of radio taxi numbers and couldn’t get through. We did call the restaurant to tell them we were still coming—they said they would hold our table but ten minutes later we began to give up hope.

And then out of the blue a taxi stopped to let someone out and when we asked if he could take us, he asked where we were going and agreed. Once we got in he explained to us that it is all but impossible to hail taxis on the street in Rome, as they prefer to respond to requests from one or the other of two taxi apps. Why? Well, because, when responding to a request from an app, they get to turn their meters on at the time they accept the request, not when they arrive for pickup. He clued us in on the apps to download and on the way back from the restaurant we managed to use one of them to get a cab in just about 10 minutes. And yes, this trip cost almost twice as much as our ride to the restaurant.

Alas, this development was to prove illusory. While we managed to get a cab via the app again the next morning, we had no luck with it in the tourist zone later in the very hot day. All our attempts to use the apps resulted only in messages that no cabs were available. Perhaps the explanation is that while tourism is back in a big way in Rome, not all the tourist infrastructure is. On the plus side, we quickly learned to take the metro and buses everywhere and this made getting around Rome very easy and much cheaper; and also more enjoyable.

Alright, back to Santo Palato. We arrived at 8 pm (for our 7.30 reservation) to find a mostly empty restaurant. No wonder they didn’t mind holding our table, we thought—but then they began to fill up at a very rapid rate and by 9 pm were completely full. A reminder again that Italians—like Indians—eat much later than Americans. I’d booked the restaurant from their website, by the way. And I would recommend doing so if you’re going to Rome. It’s a small space with not very many tables even with the outdoor seating factored in. And, as I said, it was an excellent meal. I think it would be a mistake to go to Rome and not eat there.

What did we eat?

The printed menu is relatively abbreviated. It is supplemented by a specials board that apparently changes quite often, if not nightly, based on what is available in the markets. We ordered a few things from the printed menu and a few from the specials board.

For antipasti we got two from the specials board and one from the menu. From the menu came one of the very best dishes of the night: their take on trippa alla Romana: wonderfully mellow tripe, braised to tenderness in a lovely tomato sauce and dressed with pecorino. This was particularly great eaten alongside the cicoria ripassata or twice-cooked chicory from the specials. God, I wish more restaurants in the US did sauteed chicory. Also from the specials board came thinly-sliced beef heart cured a la prosciutto and served with two thick slices of bread smeared with tomato. Also very good—the boys made most of it disappear before I could get more than a couple of slices.

For the next course, we took both the classic Roman pastas on the regular menu: the rigatoni alla carbonara and the spaghettone all’amatriciana. To this we added a special of linguine with bacala (salt cod) and peperone crusco (dried peppers). Each was outstanding and we couldn’t quite agree on how to rank them. I think I had the linguine on top but not by much. To end the savoury courses, just one dish from the secondi list: an excellent vitello tonnato or roasted veal in tuna sauce. The veal was done perfectly; the tuna sauce was delicate and complemented the reduced veal stock perfectly; the topping of chopped capers and fermented lemon zest and parsley accented it all perfectly.

Finally, a dessert from the specials board: a lovely tarte citron.

Oh yes, I had a couple of glasses of wine. I asked our server to guide me and he recommended two organic wines from the general region. You can see what they were in the slideshow below. If I remember correctly, they were both in a section of the wine list that was described as “Not quite Rosé” or something like that. Anyway, technically both were rosés but looked more orange than pink and were more mineral and funky than any other rosé I’ve had. More to the point, both were excellent, especially the second, which also had some complicated origin story that I didn’t quite track (and now am having no luck tracking down online).

For a look at the restaurant and what we ate and drank, click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow. Scroll down for thoughts on service and to see how much it all cost.

The staff were all young men of the hipster school but they were all very friendly and helpful. Their English was also quite good and so it was easy to get guidance on the food and wine. Cost? Only 124 Euros or just about $135 for the four of us. I say “only” because in the Twin Cities you’d pay far more for far less excellent food. I said that about our dinner at Mimi alla Ferrovia in Naples as well and this was quite a bit better than that meal. If you’re headed to Rome and have not eaten at Santo Palato, I’d recommend making a booking. I know that if we’re lucky enough to go back to Rome, we’ll also go back to Santo Palato.

Alright, my next few Italy reports will also be from Rome. The next will be of the lunch we ate the next day, a more but not very casual affair. I might try to get that report out this week as well. Let’s see how it goes.