Filippo Bucarelli opens Locanda Bucarelli in Rome

Filippo Bucarelli has opened Locanda Bucarelli, his first restaurant, on Via di San Giovanni in Laterano, in the stretch of Rome between the Colosseum and the basilica of San Giovanni.

Bucarelli is 34 and Roman, and spent his career so far in other people's kitchens around the capital before deciding, this September, to put his name above his own door.

A menu built on Roman staples

Rome doesn't need another idea of baccalà. It needed someone to cook it properly.

The kitchen works from Roman cuisine outward, with a menu that changes by season. The current line-up includes a calf tongue terrine with pickled vegetables, green sauce and yogurt; anellini pasta with roasted peppers, crusco pepper and buffalo mozzarella; and baccalà alla romana, salt cod cooked with tomato, raisins and pine nuts, a dish that trades the usual frying batter for something closer to a stew.

None of the three dishes is unfamiliar to Rome. What Bucarelli is selling is technique applied to food most Romans already think they know: offal handled with restraint, salt cod built around sweetness and acidity instead of crunch, a pasta shape that rarely makes it past a nonna's kitchen onto a restaurant menu.

That instinct, technique applied without disguising the ingredient, runs through Italian kitchens more broadly this autumn, the same season Piedmont's tajarin turns up dressed with nothing more than butter and white truffle.

Lazio wine over a long list

The wine list keeps to Lazio producers rather than chasing a broader Italian or international selection, backed by a short run of artisanal beers, distillates and liqueurs. It is a narrower list than most Rome openings attempt, and a deliberate one.

The address itself does some of the work. Between the Colosseum and San Giovanni is dense with tourist-menu trattorias; a young chef opening a locanda there is betting that diners walking past will still stop for cooking rather than proximity to a monument.

Rome's newest openings this September also include a run of finalists for the country's best new restaurant, a reminder of how crowded the city's opening season has become. For now, Bucarelli is betting his own name is enough of a draw.