L’oste ai banchi

This small restaurant in central Rome failed to fully impress us. We started with an excellent beef tartare, followed by a crostini with cannellini beans and pecorino cream—tasty, though technically it should be called "cannellini beans with crostini and pecorino cream" to be precise. The Roman pasta dishes, however, were less successful. The carbonara suffered from inconsistent cooking of the guanciale, pasta that needed a bit more time on the heat though it had good creaminess and a wonderful accent from well-aged pecorino. The amatriciana was disappointing—starting with the wrong pasta choice, strozzapreti, which was overcooked, combined with overly acidic tomato and too little pecorino to balance these mistakes. To finish, a decent tiramisu, very dense and perhaps leaning a touch too heavily toward the bitter notes.