ristorazione — Roma · Lazio
In the Esquilino district, just steps from the Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, a door opens onto the Rome that has never stopped eating properly. Since 1960, Bottega Trattoria De Santis has been the anchor of an entire neighbourhood and of generations of Romans.
It was grandfather Sergio who first pushed open that door in 1960, when the place was a tavola calda (canteen-style eatery) beloved by the clerks and workers of Esquilino. More than sixty years on, grandsons Stefano and Davide De Santis keep that same threshold alive: a neighbourhood entrance carrying the affectionate weight of three generations.
The setting is rustic and welcoming, as befits a trattoria that has never tried to be anything other than what it is. In the dining room, service is warm and attentive — so say customers who have been returning for eighteen years — and on Sunday afternoons the Bottega fills with that familial quiet Rome reserves for its most genuine rituals.
At the stove, chef Davide carries forward a repertoire that is the backbone of Roman cooking: Spaghettone alla Carbonara, Bucatino all'Amatriciana, Cacio e Pepe, and golden fried Costolette d'abbacchio (fried lamb chops). Recipes handed down and never betrayed, alongside meat and fish specialities that speak of the flair of someone who knows tradition well enough to know how to broaden it.
At the finish, a dish that is at once memory and living gesture. The page tells everything that Bottega De Santis preserves and renews every day, lunch after lunch.
