Tea Time: 3Quarti Restaurant In Rome

We ate at 3Quarti for lunch before hitting up the Vatican. A friend had visited Rome a few months before we went and highly recommended this place, so we specifically sought it out. I'm really glad we did! It was my favorite meal of the vacation, probably because they offered a little something different than the traditional Roman fare. Still pasta, but with more a Florence-style flair to it.
3Quarti is quite the classy restaurant, but we did see other diners with babies there, so I didn't feel bad about bringing Keila in for lunch. Dinner might be another story, even though Italians in general seem to love children.
I don't remember the exact prices for the items we ordered, but it wasn't terribly more expensive than other restaurants we'd had lunch at. I think we ordered one less appetizer than usual and the bill was about the same as the days before? Plus we were definitely satisfied with our meal: full yet not stuffed.
To start off, we ordered a smoked tuna carpaccio with avocado, and the namesake 3Quarti (in our case, the mixed seafood ones). The menu describes the 3Quarti as such: 'Our specialty: 3Quarti, three small buns realized from the dough of the pizza, manually stretched after 12 hours rising then browned with Italian extra virgin olive’s oil, natural or filled with some of our delicacies…'
Sound delicious? They were! Basically, they were just little warm buns full of whatever stuffing you chose...but they were really, really good little buns!
After stuffing ourselves full of appetizers, we decided to split a grilled chicken salad and a dish of spaghetti with sea bass, pumpkin flowers, and botargo. The chicken salad was good, but just a simple chicken salad. After all the heavy fare we'd been eating, simplicity was much appreciated, however! And the spaghetti....oh, the spaghetti. I don't know if it was the botargo or the pumpkin flower (or the sea bass) that made this dish, or maybe the combination along with perfectly al dente spaghetti, but it was superb! Most of the dishes that we ate in Rome were good but nothing memorable...this spaghetti alone would make me go back to 3Quarti. It was that tasty.
Besides the food, service was also exceptional and our waitress spoke very good English. The restaurant is quite modern looking and much more spacious than you'd imagine from the outside. It filled up pretty quickly after we arrived however, and we were at the door waiting just before 12:30! I have the feeling that it gets much more crowded for dinner, too.
If you're planning on hitting up the Vatican in the afternoon, make sure to lunch at 3Quarti first. Or hit it up after a morning of the craziness in the museums, as did some fellow Americans at the table next to us. Whatever the case, just make sure you go. And eat some of that spaghetti for me.
3Quarti
Via Attilio Regolo 21, 00192 Rome, Italy

The bar at 3Quarti