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| “So what?” vegan restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
Where to eat in Pigneto?
You can guess I’m not a big fan of Pigneto; it quickly became mainstream despite (and -in the same time- thanks to) its claimed undergroundness, thus I’m not going there so often, even if -when I do- I eventually end up by kind of liking the area. Surprisingly though, last week I’ve been in the Pigneto neighborhood twice, to attend the openings of two restaurants, both managed by people I somehow know: the vegan restaurant “So What?!” (via Ettore Giovenale 56/58) and the brewery with kitchen “Birstrò” (via Luigi Filippo De Magistris 64).
I’ve been waiting for so long to try Paolo & Alessandra’s vegan restaurant! I met them almost one year ago, I was organizing their vegan cooking classes at my daily work, a weekly appointment that allowed me to get to know this amazing couple (in the kitchen, but also in life) and since then I’ve been hearing the ups and downs about their venue hunting and, in general, their ambitious project of opening a vegan restaurant in Rome. Eventually they did it, so last week we went to celebrate my vegetarian colleague’s birthday at their brand new restaurant.
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| “So what?” vegan restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
The venue is small, ironic and colorful, with many references to cyborg/Godzilla/robot niche movies and punk culture, definitely not the usual pumpkins&lettuce furniture you find in a vegan restaurant. This kind of easy-going humour is also at the very core of their interpretation of veganism: Alessandra and Paolo (a.k.a. TheVegan Riot) want to demonstrate that vegans are not starving, not living in denial and not forced to an extremely strict regime based on privations; rather, they are happy food lovers who enjoy what is on their table without cruelty towards animals, but also without fundamentalism. They do love to eat and they do love food, they just care more than average people about what is inside their meal and the consequences of the cook’s choices. This is not supposed to be a weakness, right? So, thanks to them, I discovered that vegan cuisine is not a pale, colourless version of “normal” cuisine, but it can be even tastier! (let alone healthier…).
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| “So what?” vegan restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
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| “So what?” vegan restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
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| “So what?” vegan restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
As we were all looking forward to try their specialties, we ordered a bit of everything: tofu with onions, buckwheat with pumpkins, haricot beans with lemon and laurel (which I elected the best dish of the whole menu), potatoes with a special curry of spices and pasta with tomato sauce and vegetables. The opinion of the crowded table was not unanimous, but I guess it depends on our different degrees of addiction to animal proteins…Surely you must try Paolo and Alessandra’s cuisine before deciding if you are -or aren’t– into vegan food!
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| Birstro’ brewery with restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
A couple of days later, we went to try another upcoming restaurant nearby (actually it still has to open officially, but you can already taste the provisional menu…) whose peculiarity is to serve home made craft beers from its own little brewery. Virtuously riding the (craft beer) wave of the moment, Florinda and the two brothers Danilo and Claudio (one in the kitchen and the other in the brewery) opened this small restaurant with simple but very tasty dishes and a selection of home made beers.
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| Birstro’ brewery with restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
Herewe tried, …ehm…, almost everything on the menu: Salvatore Tassa’s melted onion, traditional tripe, pasta with char-grilled tomatoes, mint, vanilla and pecorino cheese, pasta with Amatriciana sauce, pasta cooked in beer with sausage flavoured with fennel and black poplar mushrooms, tiny dumplings with carrots cream, ginger and chicken livers, oxtail meatballs with celery and Porto reduction, beef’s cheek with red currants and spring onions stewed in beer, cheeseburger, tiramisù and other desserts of the day. Everything was delicious, especially the dumplings! :-)
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| Birstro’ brewery with restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
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| Birstro’ brewery with restaurant in Rome, Pigneto |
It turned out Pigneto is not so bad after all, especially off the beaten (pedestrian) track!
Find these (and many more) restaurants in my Rome Google Map!
Would you like to explore Rome off the beaten path with me?
Then book one of my alternative walking tours in Rome!
