Ristorante Nino
Since 1934. Same room, same Tuscan-leaning menu, same regulars. The tagliatelle al ragù is the order — and the waiters have been here longer than most restaurants in Rome have existed.
Nino is the restaurant against which we measure what a Rome institution should be: open since 1934 on Via Borgognona, just off the Spanish Steps shopping streets, with the same wood-paneled room, the same Tuscan-leaning menu, and the same career waiters who have been there longer than most Roman restaurants have been alive. It does not change because there is no reason to, and the people who eat here are the people who have always eaten here.
This is Nouri's restaurant. He studied in Rome — a Cornell semester abroad, spring, years before we met — and he never quite left; he returns to Nino the way you return to a city where you once lived. The waiters stopped handing him a menu three visits ago. We go in January, when the streets belong to us, and the table is always there.
Tuscan-leaning rather than strictly Roman — the tagliatelle al ragù is the order, the bistecca is the move when you're hungry, and the right answer to almost everything is whatever the waiter suggests. Trust the room; it has been right since 1934.
Unchanged and the better for it — wood-paneled, classic, full of regulars. The career waiters are part of the architecture.
TAGLIATELLE AL RAGÙ · BISTECCA · WHATEVER THE WAITER SUGGESTS
Nino is the platonic Rome institution — 1934, unchanged, and run by waiters who remember you. For tagliatelle al ragù in a room that has never needed to reinvent itself, there is nowhere we'd rather sit.
Book ahead — reservations are essential on weekends and for prime dinner times.
Ask for a table in the main room and let the pasta and antipasti lead the order.