WineLovers Discussion Group

I'll be in Rome from Sunday, November 19th through Tuesday, November 21. I would greatly appreciate any and all wine bar and restaurant recommendations that you have to offer. Thanks in advance!

Mike,

To be honest I drank only the house wines when I visited Rome, and found them to be uniformly quite good. The cafes offer wine, but there are really not a lot of actual wine bars per se.

There are many good restaurants, but the prices go up exponentially as you get close to the major tourist attractions, particularly the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, and the Vatican. We tried to stay away from those establishments. There is an outstanding place just behind the Forum Nerva called "Mario's" (I believe). Excellent food. Excellent house wines by the bottle. Very reasonably priced. On a couple of nights we just picked up a bottle of wine from a shop, grabbed some bread and cheese, and ate on a bench in ancient Rome. We had a great time.

Enjoy yourself.

Mike
Sorry, no recco's. I've been to Italy many times, but as yet, not once to the big three (Rome, Venice, Florence).

Frommers have a good online forum that is worth perusing / posting question about restaurants.

Also http://www.paginegialle.it (yellow pages aka business directory) isn't comprehensive, but does allow a search for businesses. There's even an option to search in English. Type wine bar / enoteca / vineria / cantina or similar (and Rome or Roma) in and see what you get back. A lot of wine shops in Italy also serve light food and wine by the glass. My experience of these places has been virtually universally favourable, with the food at times outshining the wine.

Also try a websearch for tourist offices, which often have good listings (including wine bars).

Hope this helps

Ian

Just a couple of restaurant reccos:

High end-- Agata e Romeo. Can't recall address, but they have a website, and it's well known. Superb food and presentation, contemporary touches but rooted in tradition (e.g., traditional salt-cod, but in a "four ways" dish). Wines reasonable, especially by the half bottle. A 375 (actually, two of them) of Castello d'Ama CC was the best wine I had in Rome.

Mid-priced to inexpensive-- Ristorante (or maybe Trattoria) Abruzzo. I think it's listed in Fodor's, but the address alone may not help you that much. It's in a side street very near Piazza Venezia (with its classico-militaristic-kitschy Victor Emanuel monument often called the "wedding cake"). Perfect in its unpretentious way, with the best carbonara I ever hope to have.