Niko Romito in Rome: Italian cooking, edited rather than embellished

Il Ristorante – Niko Romito treats Italian cooking as something to refine, not obscure. Its Roman setting gives that proposition a particular tension: a contemporary culinary system looks out towards a city with a long memory.

Inside Bulgari Hotel Roma, the restaurant occupies the fifth floor above Piazza Augusto Imperatore. The Mausoleum of Augustus supplies the view. This is not a neutral hotel dining room that could be moved between capitals without losing anything; the surrounding city gives the meal its frame.

A Roman building, not a generic backdrop

The hotel occupies Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo’s rationalist building, constructed between 1936 and 1938. Its travertine exterior and ordered lines differ from the more decorative image of Rome often used to sell a stay.

ACPV ARCHITECTS Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel designed the interiors. Across the hotel, handmade mosaics, Murano glass and 1930s Ginori vases designed by Gio Ponti introduce more intricate surfaces within that architectural discipline.

The restaurant has mahogany walls and a terrace. Wood gives the room a different register from the exterior stone. The important contrast is not simply old against new: it is the large scale of the building against the smaller scale of objects, surfaces and a plate.

What it means to simplify a recipe

Romito’s project for Bulgari began in Beijing in 2017 and subsequently extended to other cities. Its central question is how recognisable Italian recipes can retain their identity while their preparation is reconsidered.

On Romito’s own account, apparent simplicity rests on complex transformation techniques. Purity and lightness are culinary intentions here, not health claims. Reducing the visual noise of a dish does not necessarily reduce the work that produces it.

That distinction is more useful than calling the food minimal. A recipe carries an expectation before it reaches the table. The chef must decide which elements make it recognisable, which can change, and which additions merely distract from its structure.

A menu as a sequence

The January 2024 account described a sharing sequence opening with an Italian aperitivo. Mackerel with anise, lemon and ginger appeared alongside veal with tuna sauce, beef carpaccio with tomato mayonnaise and pasta frittata with smoked mozzarella. Cardoncello mushrooms and anchovies alla beccafico extended the range.

Those preparations describe the restaurant at that point, not a promise about tonight’s menu. Read together, they show the breadth of the Italian vocabulary involved: fish, meat, vegetables and familiar preparations, rather than one signature ingredient carrying the whole argument.

The kitchen has moved on

The current resident head chef is Gabriele Gervasi. An ALMA graduate, he worked at Bulgari Dubai and Georges Blanc in France before joining the Rome opening team in 2023 as junior sous chef.

Emilio Di Cristo, named in the January 2024 account, should therefore not be presented as the current kitchen lead. Romito’s overarching concept and the person directing its daily execution are related but distinct roles.

For dinner, consult the restaurant’s current menus rather than treating an earlier sequence as a fixed tasting. The enduring reason to come is the meeting between an Italian culinary language designed to travel and a Roman setting that cannot.

Il Ristorante – Niko Romito · Via di Ripetta 73, Rome. Current menus and reservations are available through the hotel.

Bulgari Hotels & Resorts · @bvlgarihotels