Hostaria da Nerone — Restaurant in Rome

Small, family owned establishment that felt like home. Steps from the colosseum and across from the park, but tucked away and NOT a tourist-y place at all. Family owned with nana and papa sitting down chatting with the guests. Extremely reasonably priced, each dish was no more than €8-€15. Better than other restaurants in the area that are tourist traps and overpriced. It felt like you were in your Nani’s kitchen. Top notch service and authentic hand crafted tortellini and pasta. We finally found a restaurant that serves soft and fresh country white bread. They sent us home with half a loaf! The owner and family were so sweet and took care of us. There is a buffet style area If you want to try some of the local flavors including grilled veggies, oven roasted potatoes, full artichokes, mussels, rabbit, chicken and more. There are plenty of fresh, hot dishes to choose from on the menu. I was under the weather from so much traveling, and the tortellini en brodo was the perfect thing I needed. Please eat here, save yourself the hassle of fighting the tourist traps and also save...

We used to come to this place on our visits to Rome, based on a Rick Steves recommendation for good dining near the Colosseum. It was a favorite. Once we moved to Rome in 2021 and sought it out, we found it closed and we guessed it was panedemic related. Sometime since then it reopened but not with the same owners.

We had lunch in December 2023 and found it to be quite different from the original (menu in particular) but still a solid option in this area. Pasta dishes are 14.50 euro, very limited antipasto options (3?), a liter of house wine is 10 euro. For 3 of us, with a shared antipasto and pasta and wine, it was 70 so a bit on the higher side for Rome (we usually plan on 10-12 for a plate of pasta in a regular trattoria) but the area accounts for that. Menu is in multiple languages.

The interesting thing to us was that the place was filled with locals on a weekday lunch. No tourists. Not sure what accounts for that but interesting nonethless.

While it's not like the original which was a bit sad for us and our memories, it was still a...

We needed toilet, and we though taking a break and have a coffee somewhere. We almost sit down on the tourist traps... but they were not so nice that we kept walking to get here.

The owner is amazing, chatty, he tells you stories about customers, in our case Irish, Scottish and Spanish. You walk in and there is full of people, locals and tourists enjoying their food.

The toilet is CLEAN, yes ladies... the unbelievable in Rome!