Trattoria Pennestri

I went to Trattoria Pennestri in Ostiense, a neighborhood I like because it's changing for the better. Small place, they even have a covered outdoor seating area on the street. Warm atmosphere, you feel comfortable there.

First thing: they bring you warm bread in a (nice) bag with seasoned dried tomatoes. Great way to start.

My wife had fava bean cream with roasted endive, raisins and pine nuts. The endive looked like fried artichoke, with those crispy leaves. Refined but genuinely good, not the kind of thing that seems overthought and then tastes like nothing. I had mashed potatoes that turned out to be... boiled potatoes, mashed. Fair enough, they were good but honestly, it was just a boiled potato.

Anyway, we came for the Roman pasta dishes because they were ranked for carbonara and amatriciana. We got both and that's where they really shine. The guanciale is perfect: crispy on the outside, tender inside, cut in different sizes so some pieces are more cooked, others less, but that's normal—it's hard to get everything uniform.

The amatriciana though was something else. Abundant pecorino, plenty of pepper, tomato done right, rigatoni cooked al dente as it should be. We're talking near perfection. The carbonara is excellent too, except the cream was slightly on the drier side, less silky than it could have been. But we're really splitting hairs here.

Desserts: tiramisu too dry, too many ladyfingers. A bit disappointing. The chocolate mousse with pane carasau, oil and rosemary was good, but in my opinion too salty. And anyway it was heavy, definitely meant to be shared.

Service was polite but inattentive. We waited ten minutes for the check then went to pay at the register ourselves.

Fifty-five euros for two. For how well we ate, it's fair.