The Roman-Jewish kitchen.

An artichoke, trimmed, flattened open like a flower and deep-fried until the outer leaves snap and the heart stays soft. That is carciofi alla giudia, and Scatti di Gusto's line is that it is the first thing the city is known for: say Rome and you say carciofo alla giudia and the dishes of the kosher kitchen. 6 It is a winter dish. Katie Parla flags the season every time she names it, and she sells paid walking tours in Rome. 2 The braised version, carciofi alla romana, is the other one, and few kitchens bother with both.

Eater puts the quarter's history into one paragraph and it explains why the food is different from the trattoria food four streets away: "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." 1 A kosher kitchen cannot use guanciale, so at Nonna Betta the carbonara is built on dried beef instead, which Scatti di Gusto calls Umberto Pavoncello's carbonara made otherwise. 6 Constraints make a cuisine, and this is the clearest case of it in Rome.

The fried course here is its own list. Katie Parla's instruction at Nonna Betta is to narrow to four things: "Stick to the the pezzetti fritti, concia (fried and marinated zucchini), carciofi alla giudia (in season in the winter), and spaghetti con bottarga e cicoria." She calls the rest of the kitchen a bit inconsistent, and she sells paid walking tours in Rome. 2 At Boccione the baking is the part that looks wrong and is not. The Infatuation: "don't be alarmed if your baked goods have a cracked crust or burnt edge, that's all part of the charm." 3 The second thing in that case is the pizza ebraica, which is not a pizza at all. Eater describes it as "an almond flour-based fruit cake studded with nuts, raisins, and candied fruits", and Katie Parla gives its other name, pizza de berride, a bris cake. 1 2

The artichoke left the Ghetto and the whole city cooks it now. Domenico dal 1968 out in the Appio-Latino puts both versions on one spoken menu, and the MICHELIN inspector lists them together: "carciofi alla romana and alla giudia, eggplant polpette, tripe, sweetbreads, coratella". 8 L'Osteria della Trippa in Trastevere carries it beside the tripe on a Bib Gourmand card. 9 At Da Enzo al 29 Gambero Rosso says you are duty-bound to start on it. 7 And Antonio Ziantoni sends out a carciofo travestito at Zia, an artichoke dressed as alla giudia and cooked another way, on a MICHELIN-starred menu a few streets from all of it. 7

Boccione on Via del Portico d'Ottavia, early, because Eater's whole note on the tart is grab it before it sells out. 1 The Infatuation rates the same tart, "brimming with a mound of ricotta cheese and thin layer of wild cherry jam", the best in the city. 3 Nonna Betta sixteen doors along for the fried things, inside Parla's short list and not outside it. Da Enzo al 29 across the bridge in Trastevere for the artichoke, if you will stand in the queue. And in winter, when the artichokes are in, Domenico dal 1968 puts both of them on the same table.