Rome.

Hosteria Grappolo d'Oro is the booking to make first. Antonello Magliari's Percorso Romano is four small courses for just over thirty euros, and the MICHELIN inspector answers the address before anybody raises it: Don't be fooled by its ultratouristy location between Piazza Navona and Campo de Fiori. This modern tavern is the real deal. It holds a Bib Gourmand. The room takes its own reservations, and it stands a hundred metres off Campo de' Fiori, so nobody in the party has to work out a tram.

If the group wants noise rather than courses, L'Elementare in Trastevere pours craft beer off a long counter at the entrance and Mirko Rizzo makes the pizza. Gambero Rosso puts him among the pizzaioli who brought the Roman round back, and the Infatuation rates the supplì here among the best of any sit-down pizzeria in the city. Four doors trade under the name in Rome, so book the one on Via Benedetta.

Da Remo is the cheap version and it is the risk. Time Out put a meal at around ten to fifteen euros a head without drinks in May 2025 and the pizza is low and it cracks, but the room takes no bookings at all. That works for a group who will turn up at the start of service on a weeknight and fails for one who will not, and it is shut on Sunday.

Trecca is the one to book, and the bar seats are the ones to ask for. Manuel Treccastelli has the Pulicaro farm feed certain hens so the eggs come back fat enough for his carbonara, and Gambero Rosso ranked that carbonara second of twenty-one Roman versions in 2020. The room is small and it sits four metro stops from the Colosseum, which is the whole cost of the trip.

Roscioli Salumeria con Cucina is the other counter and it is the harder one. MICHELIN's own line is that a table here is hard to get without a booking, so make one. The shop at the front sells provisions and the kitchen behind it seats you, and the queue for each is a different queue.

Sarah Cicolini fills the gap before dinner with a glass, and she walks in as the doors open. She names Trimani il Wine Bar for the Langhe reds and orders the dishes of the day; the markups there come off the shop next door, which is why the cult bottles read cheaper than across the city. It is shut on Sunday. The other room she names is La Mescita out in Garbatella, where she likes to walk in as the doors open and lets the staff choose the bottle.

Sarah Cicolini goes to Faro on a Sunday, because office workers pack the room the rest of the week. Dario Fociani pulls a double espresso for 2.50 euros because that is the price that makes the room work, and the same chef rates the pastries. It stands a few steps from Piazza Fiume, north of Termini.

Trastevere and the tram line west of it keep trading when much of the centre does not. Da Enzo al 29 trades on Sunday and shuts on Monday, and the queue down Via dei Vascellari is the price of the carciofi alla giudia; nobody takes a booking there, so arrive at the start of service. Cesare al Casaletto is the calmer answer at the last stop of the number 8 tram, where Leonardo Vignoli fries gnocchi nuggets and drops them onto a thick cacio e pepe sauce. La Tavernaccia da Bruno has the wood oven Cicolini goes for, and it takes Wednesday and Thursday off instead.

Felice a Testaccio, Sora Lella, Piatto Romano, Ristorante Tullio, Da Remo and Trimani il Wine Bar all close on Sunday, and so do the Testaccio market counters, Mordi e Vai among them. Finish at Otaleg in Monteverde Nuovo, where Marco Radicioni pasteurises six litres at a time and the counter runs late.

Book Zia for the star. Antonio Ziantoni holds one in the 2026 guide and the inspector calls the cooking creative, yet always governed by rigour and restraint, and built on solid classic foundations; the plate the guide names is quail with sage and carnation flowers. Gambero Rosso's 2026 Rome edition raised one restaurant in the city to its top rating and this was it. Take the shorter menu, because the Infatuation writes that the portions are rich enough that fewer courses is the better order. The room is shut on Monday.

Pipero Roma is the other star and the bigger bill, a small room facing the church Romans call the Chiesa Nuova at a four-euro-symbol price band, creative and contemporary rather than Roman. Reserve well ahead; the room is small and it takes no walk-ins.

Katie Parla would talk them out of it, and she is worth hearing before the booking is made. She writes that Rome's fine dining is disappointing, derivative, and precious and that a visitor may wish to give the category a pass, then makes one exception: the fish at Tempio di Iside, a short walk from the Colosseum, where she says you need not spend much to eat extraordinarily well. If the party will bend, that is the better evening.

Romanè runs straight through from midday until late, which almost nothing else on this list does. Stefano Callegari serves his carbonara at a full 130 grams of pasta, the offal leads the card from fried brain to trippa alla romana, and the room sits on Via Cipro behind the Vatican, in a quarter tourists cross rather than eat in.

Trimani il Wine Bar takes the evening into the night near Piazza della Repubblica, with the shop next door setting the markups. It is shut on Sunday. The standing version is the Trapizzino counter in Testaccio, a pocket of pizza dough with a trattoria sauce inside, invented by Callegari behind this same door when it traded as 00100, and Daria Reina's advice is to try at least three fillings.

Then it is a drink or it is gelato. Patrick Pistolesi rebuilds the whole card at Drink Kong in Monti around a new theme each year, so do not order a classic off-list. Otaleg keeps the gelato counter going late into the night. Bar San Calisto keeps selling coffee under a euro to a square of green plastic chairs, and there is no kitchen there worth the trip.

Take the morning to Testaccio, because the market trades in the morning and shuts after lunch. Inside it, Mordi e Vai is box 15, and the Espositos were butchers before they started putting boiled beef and salsa verde inside a roll; Katie Parla sends people there for the brisket and chicory. The queue at the box builds around lunch, so this is the early half of the day and not the late one.

If you would rather stay in the centre, the answer is bread. Forno Campo de' Fiori sells pizza rossa by the strip under a thin layer of tomato and small pools of oil, and Parla rates its pizza bianca and mortadella sandwich among her favourite bites in the centre. Antico Forno Roscioli on via dei Chiavari is where the pizza bianca is, and Daria Reina queues at both and calls them worth the line. In the Ghetto, Boccione sells the ricotta tart under wild-cherry jam until it runs out, and it is shut on Saturday.

Dario Fociani pulls doubles at Faro near Piazza Fiume, which Sarah Cicolini calls the first specialty room in the city. That is why a coffee there costs what it costs. Bar San Calisto in Trastevere is the other tradition and the coffee there is still under a euro. Out by the Vatican walls, Bonci Pizzarium ferments its tray dough up to seventy-two hours and the counter runs through the day, closed on Monday.

Start inside the Mercato di Testaccio, at the via Beniamino Franklin entrance, while the produce stalls are still trading. Gambero Rosso calls the hall one of the most successful of Rome's food markets, and the counters to walk to are Mordi e Vai at box 15, where the Esposito family fill rolls with picchiapò and boiled-beef meatballs, and Casa Manco, whose slice Time Out rates first in the city on a hundred-hour leaven. The Mastroianni family has the fish at box 94. Eat standing; there is nowhere else to do it.

Walk two minutes to Trapizzino on via Giovanni Branca, which is where the shape was invented. Stefano Callegari was running a slice shop called 00100 when he started putting trattoria sauces inside a pocket of pizza dough, and Daria Reina's advice is to try at least three fillings. Katie Parla's order is the chicken cacciatora. From there the walk is Piazza di Santa Maria Liberatrice and the streets off it, past the ex-mattatoio the quinto quarto came out of.

Come back after dark for Da Remo on the same square. The pizza is low and it cracks, Time Out put a meal at around ten to fifteen euros a head in May 2025, and nobody takes a booking, so arrive at the start of service. The quarter shuts on Sunday and so does he. That is the whole day: the market before it closes after lunch, a trapizzino on the way out, and a table on the square at night, and a single visit in the early evening would have caught none of it.

Sarah Cicolini walks into a Roman wine bar as it opens, for an aperitivo before dinner. The two she names are La Mescita in Garbatella, where the list is organic and biodynamic and the waiters choose for you, and Trimani il Wine Bar near Piazza della Repubblica, where she takes the Langhe reds and orders the dishes of the day. Trimani's markups come off the shop next door, which is why the cult bottles read cheaper here than across the city. It is shut on Sunday.

Then eat somewhere that does not take a booking, because you have already used the evening's plan on the glass. Da Enzo al 29 is the Trastevere version: no bookings at number 29, a queue down via dei Vascellari, carciofi alla giudia and a carbonara at the end of it, and Monday shut. In Testaccio, Da Remo does the same job for a third of the money and fills fast. Both want you at the start of service rather than in the middle of it.

If the party will book, the pairing changes. La Mescita sits twenty minutes on foot from Trattoria Pennestri in Ostiense, which takes its tables a week out and by telephone, and four metro stops from Trecca, where Manuel Treccastelli has a farm feed certain hens so the eggs suit his carbonara. Both eat better than the queue does, and both want the table held before you pour the first glass.