Kosher restaurants in Rome: eating in the ghetto and beyond

Kosher restaurants in Rome: eating in the ghetto and beyond

Rome is the easiest city in Italy to eat kosher, and it is not close. The reason is geography: almost everything certified sits on or around Via del Portico d’Ottavia, the main street of the former ghetto, under the supervision of the Rabbinate of the Jewish Community of Rome. You can stand in the middle of that street and be within two hundred metres of a dozen kosher tables.

What follows is the map I give my own guests — not a directory scraped from the internet, but the places a kosher traveller actually uses in a week in Rome.

First, know what Roman Jewish food is

The cuisine of the ghetto is its own tradition, five centuries old, built from cheap ingredients under restriction and now imitated all over the city — mostly in non-kosher versions. Eating it inside the ghetto, certified, is the point of coming here. The dishes to look for:

• Carciofi alla giudia — the twice-fried whole artichoke, the most famous Jewish dish in Italy. In season roughly November to April; the full story is here
• Fiori di zucca — courgette flowers fried in a light batter, filled in the dairy places with mozzarella and in some meat kitchens with anchovy only
• Baccalà — salt cod, fried in strips or stewed with tomato and onions
• Aliciotti con l’indivia — a baked press of fresh anchovies and curly endive, the oldest dish on the street
• Crostata di ricotta e visciole — the ricotta and sour-cherry tart the ghetto’s bakery is famous for

The meat side of the street

Ba’Ghetto (Via del Portico d’Ottavia 57) is the name most visitors know — Roman Jewish and Middle Eastern meat cooking, big tables, and the one with the most structured Shabbat service: dinner and lunch are booked and paid online before Shabbat begins. Nonna Betta, a few doors down, is the more self-consciously Roman kitchen — this is where to compare their carciofo with everyone else’s. Su Ghetto and Bellacarne complete the row; Bellacarne is the one with the deliberate modern-butcher identity, and the pastrami to match.

Between them they cover every night of a week, which is roughly what it takes to eat the repertoire once.

The dairy side

Kashrut splits the street in two. Ba’Ghetto Milky (directly across from its meat sibling) handles the pizza, pasta and fish end of the tradition — this is where the mozzarella-filled fiori di zucca live. Yotvata, on Piazza Cenci at the edge of the ghetto, is the other dairy anchor, and the one Roman families fill on Sunday nights.

The bakery you must not miss

The Antico Forno del Ghetto — every Roman calls it Boccione — is a bare doorway on the corner of Via del Portico d’Ottavia with no sign worth the name and a queue that tells you everything. Ricotta and sour-cherry crostata, almond-paste pizza ebraica studded with candied fruit, burnt edges on purpose. It sells out, usually by early afternoon. Go in the morning, pay in cash, and do not ask for a menu.

Beyond the ghetto

Kosher Rome does not end at the ghetto’s edges, though it thins quickly. There are certified options scattered towards Piazza Bologna — the other Jewish neighbourhood of Rome, where fewer tourists go — including kosher pizzerias and a burger counter or two. If you are staying outside the centre, tell me where and I will tell you what is actually near you, because the situation changes year to year and the lists online are always one closure behind.

The three rules that save your dinner

• Shabbat closes the street. Every kosher restaurant closes Friday night and Saturday to walk-ins. The ones that serve Shabbat meals do it by pre-paid booking only, arranged before Friday. Decide your Shabbat plan on Tuesday, not on Friday afternoon
• Festivals close it too — and the dates move every year. Check the calendar before you set your week
• Book dinner everywhere, always. The ghetto is now one of the most visited corners of Rome, and the kosher rooms are small. A same-day table in season is luck, not planning

Eat where you learned

The reason to eat on this street rather than in a kosher restaurant anywhere else in Europe is that the food is the history. The artichoke, the salt cod and the endive-and-anchovy bake exist because of what the ghetto was — and they taste different after you have walked it. My private tour of the former ghetto and the Great Synagogue ends, not accidentally, at dinner time on Via del Portico d’Ottavia. For a table for thirty, a private room, or a kosher chef cooking where you are staying, that is what I arrange every week — write to me.