Boccione
Buy the ricotta tart under wild-cherry jam before the Ghetto's last kosher bakery sells out of it.
Why go
The Infatuation calls it the sole kosher bakery left in Rome's historic Jewish Ghetto
and rates the tart the best in the city (The Infatuation). Eater's map puts the room in its own history: For more than three centuries, Rome's Jewish community was confined to a walled ghetto along the Tiber River. The squalid buildings are long gone, but a historic ghetto-era bakery survives on what has become the transformed neighborhood's main thoroughfare
(Eater).
The second thing in the case is the pizza ebraica, which is not a pizza. Eater describes it as "an almond flour-based fruit cake studded with nuts, raisins, and candied fruits". Katie Parla, on her own Rome list, gives it its other name, pizza de berride, a bris cake. The pizza ebraica keeps for a journey. The biscotti carry cinnamon and whole almonds.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the ricotta and sour-cherry tart, first. Eater:
grab it before it sells out.
1 - Avoid: worrying about the bake. The Infatuation:
don’t be alarmed if your baked goods have a cracked crust or burnt edge—that’s all part of the charm.
2
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation (Annie Replogle):
their baked tart brimming with a mound of ricotta cheese and thin layer of wild cherry jam is the best in the city.
2 - Katie Parla: the bakery "does amazing fruitcake called pizza ebraica or pizza de berride(bris cake, basically), as well as delicious cinnamon and almond biscotti and ricotta cakes." She sells paid walking tours in Rome.3
Good to know
- The room: the Infatuation says it is smaller than a walk-in closet and that you order at the counter from the sisters who run it.
- Where: Via del Portico d'Ottavia 1, on the Ghetto's main street.
- Reviews: I have not found a scored review of this bakery.
Verdict
should-visit — The Infatuation and Eater both send you to the same thing: a tart of ricotta under wild-cherry jam that runs out. The pizza ebraica beside it is an almond-flour fruit cake, not a pizza, and it travels. Eater puts the room in three centuries of a walled quarter and notes the buildings are gone and the bakery is not. It stays under must-visit because no critic has published a verdict, which for a counter with four things in the case is an honest place to stop.