Testaccio Food: What to Eat in the Rione

Roman cooking is short on ingredients and long on technique, and most of what it is famous for was invented within a mile of Mercato Testaccio. Here is what to order, what is in it, and which of the Testaccio food tour listings puts it in front of you.

The four pastas, and how they differ

Gricia, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and carbonara are one family, and the difference between them is a single ingredient each time. Gricia is guanciale and pecorino romano. Take out the guanciale and add black pepper and you have cacio e pepe. Put the guanciale back and add tomato and you have amatriciana. Add egg yolk instead of tomato and you have carbonara.

All four need pecorino romano, a hard sheep's cheese. Three of them need guanciale, cured pork cheek — not pancetta and not bacon. Both are bought at the market counters. That is why a walk which goes inside can show you the raw material, then feed you the finished dish an hour later. The cooking class in Testaccio makes three of the four by hand in a single morning.

Supplì and the fried things

A supplì is a rice ball, usually with tomato through it and a piece of mozzarella in the middle, crumbed and fried. When you pull it apart and the cheese strings, that is a supplì al telefono, named for a telephone cord. It appears on more of these walks than any other single item. It costs a couple of euros at a counter, and it is the fastest way to understand Roman street food.

Beside it you will meet fried courgette flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovy, and filetti di baccalà, salt cod in batter. Neither is a snack: two of each is lunch.

Pizza bianca, and the trapizzino

Pizza bianca is the plainest thing in the Roman repertoire and the one Romans eat most. Flatbread, salt, olive oil, nothing else, sold by weight and torn rather than sliced. Split it, fill it with mortadella, and you have the sandwich the market sells all morning. Pizza rossa is the same dough with tomato and no cheese.

The trapizzino is a modern Roman invention and a good one. It is a triangular pocket of pizza dough filled with a classic braise: chicken cacciatora, oxtail, or tongue in salsa verde. Two of the Trastevere walks begin at a trapizzino counter, which tells you how quickly it has become standard.

Quinto quarto, if you want it

The quinto quarto dishes are what Testaccio is historically known for. Coda alla vaccinara is oxtail braised slowly with celery and a little cocoa. Trippa alla romana is tripe in tomato with mint and pecorino, and coratella is lamb offal with onions. They come from the Mattatoio, where the workers were paid in the cuts nobody wanted; the history page tells that story properly.

If offal is not for you, say so when you book rather than on the day. Every walk here has a version without it, and the guide will simply order you something else at the same stop.

Carciofi, and the months they are good

The Carciofo Romanesco del Lazio IGP is harvested from January through May, at its best from early March to late April. It was the first Italian product to be granted EU protected status. Two preparations matter. Carciofo alla romana is braised whole with mint and garlic. Carciofo alla giudia, the Jewish Ghetto's, is flattened and deep-fried twice so the leaves open like a flower and shatter.

Outside that window the fried artichoke on a Ghetto walk is not a local one. If artichokes are why you are coming, book between March and April and take one of the walks that crosses into the Ghetto.

Maritozzo, and the Roman breakfast

A maritozzo is a soft, slightly sweet bun, split along the top and packed with whipped cream. Eat it standing at a bar with a coffee, before nine if you want it fresh. One of the market mornings opens with one at a pasticceria in the rione. That is the correct way to start a day here, and a poor way to start a morning of fourteen tastings. Guides say so anyway.

Pecorino, guanciale and where they come from

Two ingredients carry this cuisine and both are worth buying to take home. Pecorino romano is a hard, salty sheep's-milk cheese, grated over almost everything and sold by the wedge at the market cheese counters. Guanciale is pork cheek cured with salt and pepper, fattier and more perfumed than pancetta, sold by the piece at the butchers.

Ask for un etto — a hundred grams — and expect to be given a taste before you commit. Mercato Testaccio sets out which counters are which.

What a walk gives you, and what it does not

A guided morning gives you sequence, quantity and the names. Eight or so counters in the right order, enough of each to know whether you like it, and somebody to say what you are eating. What it does not give you is a menu you chose. Tastings are set and they change with the season. A listing that promises fifteen of them is promising volume, not a particular dish.

If there is something you specifically want, tell the operator when you book. If there is something you cannot eat, tell them twice. Several of these listings state plainly that they cannot accommodate vegan or gluten-free diets, and that is better known in advance than discovered at the second stop.