When in Rome…make sure to bring an extra suitcase, because after visiting the best food shops in Rome you’ll be coming back home with a lot of delicious goodies.
Rome is a food shopping paradise for both locals and visitors. At markets like San Giovanni di Dio, Testaccio, Circo Massimo you’ll find:
- greengrocers trimming artichokes…
- fishmongers lovingly scaling fish…
- butchers boasting whole lambs and pig heads…
- stalls selling cheese, pasta, oil, and dozens of other delights…
Whether you’re at the market or a small mom-and-pop-shop, there are lots of great spots to find premium italian gourmet foods in Rome. Let’s dive in.
Some of the best food shops in Rome
Antica Caciara
The name tells you everything you need to know (it loosely means “old cheese shop,” but there’s more than just that here). At this Trastevere institution, you can find cured meats, dried pasta and even baccala (salt cod). Remember this is Rome, where cacio refers to the king of cheeses: Pecorino Romano DOP.
Walking into Antica Caciara (Via San Francesco a Ripa, 140), you’re almost knocked over by the aroma of wheels of sharp, sheepy pecorino. This is the real stuff, produced on small farms outside of Rome as it has been for thousands of years.
Roberto, the proprietor, has dedicated his life to procuring, storing and selling Rome’s most beloved cheese. He’ll gladly shrink-wrap a piece of it for you to take home, and maybe throw in a wild-boar salame in.
If you feel like you need to learn more about Italian cheeses before your trip, check out our crash course in Italian cheeses.
Bernabei
Pecorino needs wine, and right across the Viale Trastevere from Antica Caciara is Bernabei.
One of the most prominent wine merchants and undoubtedly one of the best food shops in Rome, Bernabei has several locations around Rome (most notably, in Testaccio), as well as an extensive online store.
Bernabei combines quality, variety and affordability. The store is divided by regions of Italy.
Want to try an Emilian Lambrusco? A real Venetian Prosecco? Or maybe a classic Roman Frascati? It’s all there, and can even be shipped. Make sure to take your time to enjoy the experience of Bernabei.
Volpetti
No one who walks by Volpetti can resist going in. The window is like a Renaissance still life, where hanging prosciutti cast a shadow on piles of peppercorn-studded cheeses the color of hay.
Volpetti, located in Testaccio, is perhaps the city’s most famous food store, and easily one of the best food shops in Rome. Its shelves and fridges are vast, full of everything from made-that-morning burrata to dried pasta in a dozen shapes.
We’d recommend getting the thing which was designed to survive a long voyage: cured meat. In particular, the individual salami made of cinta senese pork, an ancient Tuscan breed prized for the incredible flavor of its fat.
One of those, shrink-wrapped by the helpful staff, will be a hit for the dinner party you throw when you get home.
Innocenti
The majority of pastries found in Roman pastry shops aren’t meant for on-the-go consumption. Whether it’s a freshly baked cornetto or a decadent rum baba, these treats are best savored right there in the shop.
Cookies are different. At Innocenti (Via della Luce, 21), in the picturesque Trastevere, you can and should get a box of cookies to bring home.
These aren’t the giant, gooey disks of an American bakery. Here, the cookies are small and refined. Buttery shortbreads are dotted with jam or dipped in chocolate. Classic biscotti are rich with almonds and grains of sugar.
Kept in a jar, these treats will last for weeks. That is, unless you eat them all the day you get back.
Pascarella
A kosher butcher doesn’t seem like an obvious place to go food shopping in Rome, but we’re not sending you to this south Trastevere spot to pick up a shabbat chicken.
Over the last millennium, Rome’s historic Jewish population has developed an Italian cuisine of its own, which means kosher cured meat.
At Pascarella, they make two traditional products that you can easily bring home: salame kasher and carne secca.
- The former is salami, made with kosher beef rather than pork, which gives it a stronger, leaner flavor.
- The latter is air-dried beef, with a texture that recalls prosciutto, which Roman Jews mix with pasta and vegetables.
Either way, these will be something uniquely Roman that guests at home will surely never have tasted.
Sapor D’Olio
You didn’t think we’d forgotten oil, right? In Italy, oil is as regional as cheese or wine.
Someone from Puglia might love their own spicy, throat-tickling olio, and think that the buttery, mild stuff produced outside Rome is inedible, and vice versa.
At Sapor D’Olio, Italy is united in one store. They have every olive oil you can imagine.
Varieties from Sicily, Tuscany and Liguria, small bottles and huge cans, stuff harvested a week ago or a year ago, oil to cook with and oil that should only ever be used raw. And, of course, you can taste it all before deciding.
A bottle of the really good stuff will not only be cheaper than what you buy back home, but it’s quality is undoubtedly much better.
Join us on our Testaccio Neighborhood Food & Market Tour. From morning pastries to traditional Roman pasta, discover what locals in the neighborhood are eating while meeting passionate local artisans who embody its rich history and culture, offering a true taste of Roman life off the beaten path. You’ll also take a visit one of our favorite gourmet shops in town (hint: it’s one of these!).
Update Notice: This post was updated on January 17, 2023.
