Bonci Pizzarium was a place I discovered thanks to the taste buds of one of my favourite foodies.
Nikki’s blog (and taste buds!) have guided me in many of my city adventures, and Italy was no different. The minute I announced that I was heading to Rome, notifications popped up with recommendations of places I should go to eat—and Bonci Pizzarium was one of them.
Bonci Pizzarium is the creation of Gabriele Bonci, somebody who’s been dubbed the king of good and fair pizza by almost every publication. He believes in quality without compromise, supporting agriculture and using only the freshest and most natural ingredients, where possible.
But at the time, I didn’t know any of this.
I knew two things: I love pizza and I trusted Nikki’s taste buds.
I had spent the morning working up an appetite, roaming around St Peter’s Square in Vatican City, before deciding that I’d be better off doing a tour because the queues were insane. And with the familiar pang of hunger creeping in, I knew where I needed to go: Bonci Pizzarium.
You can smell the freshly baked dough from across the street before you even see the entrance, but when you do you’ll see people standing outside huddled around tables chatting animatedly as they tuck into their slices.
The process of ordering at Bonci is simple. You take a number, wait your turn and then choose your pizza slices.
There are a wide variety of toppings available, including your classic Margherita and Pepperoni, in addition to a more creative selection. Each topping combination is chosen by the chef’s imagination, drawing inspiration from the season. This means you get to try flavour combinations such as sausage, fennel and orange or caramelised onion, pear and gorgonzola!
All of the pizzas are cut with scissors and priced by weight, enabling you to choose exactly how much of each you’d like to try. Or if you’re me, you ponder over the choices for way too long, before deciding to try a little bit of everything!
The atmosphere is casual and laid back, and I was fortunate that it wasn’t too busy when I arrived and so I opted to eat out the front, making the most of Rome’s warmer temperatures.
The pizzas at Bonci are different from those I’ve tried before. Not just because of the flavour combinations (some were amazing, and some I wasn’t blown away by) but because the base was a different texture from what I’m used to.
Serving a traditional Roman-style pizza, the dough is bubbly, with crisp outers and a fluffy inner which, upon Googling, I’ve discovered is because it’s left to rise for 72 hours. This change to the dough provides a pizza experience like no other.
I stood there eating until I could stomach no more, before continuing on to explore more of Rome and battle the carb-bloat that was about to arrive.
If you’re in Rome and fancy pizza, hear to Via Della Meloria, 43, 00136 to find Bonci Pizzeria—or why not try your hand at a traditional pizza cooking class?
