We had dinner at Osteria del Tempo Perso at the recommendation of our concierge, who was able to make us a same-day Sunday evening reservation. We wanted something easy but delicious, with great pasta, and this place definitely fit the bill.
The restaurant was charming, very much in line with my pre-existing idea of a Roman trattoria. It was in a high-traffic area, central enough that we randomly walked past it later in our trip. We sat on the patio between tourist couples from Louisiana and Denmark. It was a pleasant setting, not terribly busy at 6:15.
Service was polite but perfunctory. I was kind of stunned when all food arrived at once, our pastas thunking down at the same time as our starters. It felt like they were trying to get us out of there in an hour, and we obliged. We had an 8:00 bar reservation, so it kind of worked out, but I would've been more annoyed if this had been our whole plan for the night.
The food was hit or miss, though the hits more than made up for the misses. There was a bread basket with good, crusty brown and white bread and a couple of rolls, and we helped ourselves to the house olive oil and balsamic on the table. The Parma ham and melon was the best of the appetizers (I'm calling them that even though we ate them after the pasta, as we weren't worried about them getting cold). Silky 24-month ham and sweet, juicy honeydew. The Roman-style artichoke was solid, served with a puntarelle salad with anchovy sauce. The red prawns from Mazara del Vallo, though, were weird and bad, served not just on ice but still partilally frozen. I love raw seafood, and have rarely had worse.
The pasta, though, was spectacular, some of the best I had the whole trip. The restaurant makes its own, and it had that lovely supple quality you only get in fresh pasta. The fettuccine with white veal ragout was a fantastic green pasta with a rich, flavorful ragout, fragrant with herbs. The tonnarelli all'Amatriciana was my platonic ideal of a tomato sauce pasta, thick al dente noodles with a brilliant acidic sauce and meaty nuggets of guanciale.
We had wine by the glass to go with our meal, the house white and house red, and I guess it's good we didn't order a whole bottle, as we wouldn't have had time to finish it. We did get little cookies with the check, as well as a prompt from our waiter that tip was not included in the service fee. There was no way to leave one on the card reader, but we could leave cash. We didn't have any and almost felt bad, but I do suspect he only gives that spiel to Americans.
Osteria del Tempo Perso isn't a perfect restaurant, but I'd still recommend it for a low-key wine and pasta meal if you're visiting Rome. The trattoria ambiance was nice, and I really loved that Amatriciana. read more
