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The Best Restaurants in Rome, Chosen Properly

Three stars above the domes, a family trattoria by the Pantheon, and the deli where every seat is spoken for weeks out.

6 min read · Updated September 2026

The Best Restaurants in Rome, Chosen Properly

Rome eats differently from the rest of Italy. It is not the city of long tasting menus — it is carbonara at a wood-panelled table, and it is also, quietly, one of the great fine-dining cities in Europe.

These are the tables we book, from the only three-star kitchen in the city to a family trattoria that has barely changed since 1961. Each entry says when to go, because in Rome timing is the difference between the meal and the queue.

The one dinner that is an occasion

La Pergola is Rome's only three-Michelin-star table, on a terrace above the Rome Cavalieri with St Peter's dome at the centre of the view. Heinz Beck's kitchen is precise and the cellar is enormous — this is where anniversaries happen. Book weeks out and ask for the terrace at sunset.

The classic, done exactly

Armando al Pantheon is the trattoria every visitor hopes to find: a family room twelve tables wide, saltimbocca and carbonara by the old recipes, a step from the Pantheon's portico. Book the moment reservations open — the tourists have found it, and it has earned them.

Roscioli is the other kind of classic: half deli, half restaurant, with the carbonara argument settled in favour of guanciale and a wine list that runs to hundreds of Italian labels.

The view worth dressing for

Imàgo sits on the sixth floor of the Hassler, looking straight down the Spanish Steps. A Michelin-starred kitchen on the window side, the whole red roofscape below — book a window table for the last hour of light.

Between the tables

Rome's eating is dense enough that you should walk it off rather than drive it. The Pantheon at opening — before nine — is a different building from the one at midday.

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