In Fucina
Edoardo Papa tops his margherita, Sua Maestà al Rum, with cherry tomatoes flambéed in rum.
Why go
Edoardo Papa was a manager at an industrial-safety company, with no pizza-maker in his family, before he opened In Fucina in 2009. He opened it in Portuense as the restaurant that loves pizza
. Gambero Rosso calls it the first gourmet pizzeria in Rome (Gambero Rosso, 2024). He started Rome's tasting-menu pizza there: every pizza is cut for the table and the pizzas arrive one after another, in a sequence Papa decides. The gelato maker Marco Radicioni remembers being sent to him in the early years: it was Rome's first tasting-menu pizza, and he was a real character; if you asked for a capricciosa he sent you away
(Gambero Rosso, 2025).
The Portuense room on Via Giuseppe Lunati closed at the end of 2022. Papa reopened at the start of May 2024 in San Lorenzo, in the rooms of Il Borracciao, a Tuscan trattoria that opened in the mid-sixties, and kept its armchairs and its grill. The dough now uses organic Italian flours from farms in a FAO project on low-impact tillage and soil conservation. His wife, Emanuela Scotti, runs the room (Gambero Rosso, 2024). Gambero Rosso's pizzeria guide named it La novità dell'anno, its newcomer of the year, for 2025. Its card says Edoardo Papa plays on textures and contrasts of flavor, small details and shades of taste,
and points to a Cacio e Pepe pizza with trawled prawns and Timut pepper (Gambero Rosso, 2025).
Vincenzo Pagano of Scatti di Gusto ate at the old room in 2018 and liked the dough: The toppings stand out so easily because the dough is a thin sheet, not aggressive but not impersonal either.
He called the pizza with small trawled squid, Cabras bottarga and Apulian burrata spot on
(Scatti di Gusto, 2018). Dissapore disagreed in 2021, also at Via Lunati. Its reviewer found the crust crisp but baked a little long, almost too like shortcrust or a breadstick,
and the supplì faded, with the rice is dry and well overcooked
(Dissapore, 2021). The Rome food writer Katie Parla had a reservation of her own in 2010: I am a pizza purist and want the dough and the toppings to mingle more fluidly with one another
(Katie Parla, 2010).
At the 2024 opening Gambero Rosso put the bill at 25 to 28 euros a head, lower than the old room's. The 2025 card gives an average of 40 euros, with pizzas from 8 to 20 (Gambero Rosso, 2025).
Order this / avoid
- Avoid: the supplì, if it is still made the way Dissapore had it at the old room in 2021.5
What locals & experts say
- Marco Radicioni, gelato maker of Otaleg (Gambero Rosso International, 2016), of the old room:
In Fucina, for their spirit of innovation which is unrivalled in Rome, in my opinion.
8 - Dissapore (2021), of the old room: 6.5 out of 10, with service it found
surprisingly friendly, quick, ready and attentive.
5
Good to know
- Booking: call 06 8879 1819 before you go to check the San Lorenzo hours and closing day.
- Drink: the list favors natural and biodynamic wines, with craft beer on tap and in bottle (Gambero Rosso, 2024).
- Where: Via dei Salentini 6, San Lorenzo. The old Via Giuseppe Lunati address in Portuense is shut.
Verdict
could-visit — Go with friends for Rome's first tasting-menu pizza, shared wedge by wedge in an order Edoardo Papa picks, at the San Lorenzo room Gambero Rosso named its best new pizzeria of 2025. The meals critics praised and panned were all at his old room in Portuense. Call ahead for the hours and closing day.