Rome is a great city to eat in if you stick to traditional food at traditional restaurants. The city is currently undergoing a love affair with sushi and innovative cooking, usually referred to as “cucina creativa,” creative cuisine. For Italians, this food may be different, interesting, even delicious. For Americans, it is none of those. We do creative food better. Certainly, we have better Japanese food. Indeed, what my American friends who live in Rome crave most is Asian cooking of all kinds.

     Although other Italians may tell you that there is no such thing as local Roman food, they are wrong. There are many dishes that Romans rightly consider their own and that are served in the restaurants. Indeed, now that Italian women are as liberated as American women and working long hours at responsible jobs, they are cooking less. As a result, the restaurants are serving dishes that used to be more or less reserved for home. That’s all the better for us tourists.

     Among the foods you should try to sample, when in season (Italian food everywhere is highly seasonal), are the Roman artichokes, cooked alla Romana, which is to say braised with garlic and mint, or alla Giudia, or Jewish-style, which is spread out and fried in olive oil so they end up looking like flowers. Among other vegetable dishes, don’t miss the Roman cauliflower, which is chartreuse in color and with a taste between our green broccoli and white cauliflower.

     In the spring, make sure to eat wild asparagus. They won’t be served as a vegetable – at least, I have never encountered them offered for their own sake – but they may be in a bowl of pasta, or in some other guise. Spring also brings fava beans and peas, puntarelle, a chicory-related salad green most often tossed with a dressing that includes anchovies, as well as Rome’s famous abbacchio, white-fleshed suckling lamb.

     In the winter, don’t pass up broccoletti, a type of broccoli di rape. In summer, you’ll find all the vegetables you associate with Italian cooking: tomatoes, of course, eggplant, zucchini, sweet peppers in red and gold. One Roman specialty is tomatoes stuffed with rice and baked. You will see them everywhere.

     The most famous cheese of Rome is percorino Romano, the sheep’s milk grating cheese, and it plays a part in many of the nearly infinite number of pasta dishes you will encounter. The two most famous local pastas are spaghetti alla carbonara and spaghetti or bucatini all’Amatriciana. Carbonara is these days often not spaghetti at all but penne or rigatoni with a “sauce” that is really a coating of eggs, pecorino, and diced guanciale, the fatty cheek meat of a pig, or pancetta (bacon). Amatriciana is pasta with a guanciale or pancetta-based tomato sauce (with or without onions or garlic) and a hit of hot pepper.

     Arrabbiata is nearly the same as Amatriciana but with more hot pepper and often no pancetta or guanciale. Pasta alla gricia is a sort of white Amatriciana – just pasta, usually spaghetti, with guanciale and pecorino (sometimes onion or garlic). Cacio e pepe is pasta with nothing more than grated pecorino and lots of black pepper with either olive oil or pork fat as the lubricant.

     Ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta, sauced with melted butter and sage, is a favorite stuffed pasta. I for one can never eat enough of them.

     The most famous Roman dessert is tartufo, which is a ball of chocolate ice cream coated with chunks of bitter chocolate. You won’t find tartufi in the restaurants, only in caffès and gelaterias. If you want to indulge I urge you to stop at the caffè where it was invented, Tre Scalini, in the Piazza Navona. It’s expensive, but worth the rent for the table – meaning the price of your dessert -- to watch the goings on in the busy piazza. It’s a perfect perch for one of the best shows in town.

     For a snack, try a tramezzino, a triangular sandwich on crustless white bread. They are sold everywhere (my favorite spot for them in the historic center of the city, near the Campo de’ Fiori, is listed below), or supplì al telefono, an elongated fried rice ball. (In Naples and other points south, these are called arancini.)

     Roman pizza is thin-crusted and, to me, an adopted Neapolitan, not nearly as satisfying as Neapolitan pizza, but I’ve never been known to pass up pizza of any kind. Roman pizza bianca, essentially flat bread dressed with oil and salt and sometimes rosemary, is a great snack. There are a few excellent places to buy it in around or near the Campo de’ Fiori (see below).

Keep in mind that each establishment has a weekly closing day and that some close for the entire month of August. Also, credit cards are rarely accepted at bars and less expensive places -- so call if in doubt.