Food
Shop with a Roman cook at the market, then learn the one dish everyone gets wrong.
Testaccio grew up around the old slaughterhouse, and the food here is still the food of people who were paid in the cheap cuts. It is the most honest cooking in Rome, which is why we start here: at the covered market, with a cook who has bought her cheese from the same stall for twenty years.
Cacio e pepe is three ingredients: pecorino, black pepper and pasta water. Nothing else goes in. That is exactly why it is hard. We teach the one technique that matters, and by lunchtime you will have made it yourself and eaten it with a glass of wine.
9:30
We meet outside the market and walk the stalls with your cook: the cheese counter, the vegetable stands, the butcher, and the place for pizza bianca. You buy what the recipes need.
11:00
A short walk to a home kitchen in the neighbourhood. Aprons on, and a first glass of something cold while the cook explains the plan.
11:30
We start with the fried rice balls with a molten mozzarella centre, because they need time to cool. You roll, fill and fry your own.
12:30
The main lesson. Your cook shows the technique with the pasta water and the pecorino, then you each make a portion at your own burner.
13:30
We sit at one long table and eat what we have made, with wine, followed by a classic Roman dessert and coffee.
Outside Piramide metro station
Piazzale Ostiense, 00154 RomaPiramide is on metro line B. We walk to the market together, about 10 minutes. The market is closed on Sundays, so we do not run this class on that day.
Open in mapsYes for vegetarian. Cacio e pepe is made with wheat pasta, so for gluten-free guests we use gluten-free pasta and tell you the technique still works. Tell us when you enquire.
No. The class is for people who like eating. Your cook is patient and good at spotting what is going wrong.
You can bring the recipes home. The dish itself does not travel, but we show you how to find the right pecorino at a good deli near you.
Food
from€129per personAperitivo on a quiet piazza, then a long Roman supper in four stops across Trastevere, with a guide who has known the owners for years.
Outdoors
from€99per personRide the old Roman road through the regional park by e-bike, with stops at tombs, an aqueduct and a catacomb, and a long lunch at a farm along the way.
