Simplicity is the hallmark of the cuisine. Despite its ancient reputation as the voluptuous capital of an empire with a taste for peacocks at banquets, Rome offers more-basic satisfaction, food that fed shepherds and peasants reaching back over time. Roman food is comfort food.

YEARS ago, New Yorkers in search of culinary enlightenment did not come back from Italy raving about Roman food. Rome was where your plane landed on the way to that dream trip to Tuscany. 
Back at home, returned travelers could always find Roman icons like spaghetti alla carbonara, bucatini all’amatriciana, fritto misto and saltimbocca in scores of Italian restaurants. But in the last year or so, a half-dozen new places inspired by Rome, not the inevitable Tuscany, have opened around New York. Their menus plumb the repertory beyond the well-known crowd-pleasers.
Simplicity is the hallmark of the cuisine. And it is starting to resonate with New Yorkers who will happily dig into a plate of tender yet crisp porchetta, the classic roast pig. Despite its ancient reputation as the voluptuous capital of an empire with a taste for peacocks at banquets, Rome offers more-basic satisfaction, food that fed shepherds and peasants reaching back over time. 
Meats, especially oxtails, often bear the tagline alla vaccinara ("in the butcher’s style"). Stracciatella, a broth thick with strands of egg, and saltimbocca, which should be small pieces of tender veal topped with prosciutto and sage, no cheese, and quickly sautéed with a splash of wine to "jump into the mouth", are to Rome what pesto is to Genoa.
Dishes rely on humble cuts of meat, wild herbs, salted cod and simply dressed pasta. Black pepper, chili and salt are the seasonings of choice at the neighborhood trattorias to which Romans are fiercely loyal. And what better cuisine when the economy sours? 
“Roman food is comfort food. Cacio e pepe" pasta with cheese and black pepper "is mac and cheese",  said John Fanning, a partner in Accademia di Vino in Manhattan, who once owned a wine bar in Rome. "And now, with everyone crazy about nose-to-tail and oddball cuts of meat, Roman food fits right in",  he said. "They’ve always done food like that in Rome".
Not surprisingly, New York’s new Roman landscape is full of carnivorous names. Testaccio, a new restaurant in Long Island City, is named for the slaughterhouse district in Rome and is decorated with old photos of that neighborhood. Danny Meyer, a restaurateur whose diverse inventory over two decades never touched Italy, recently opened Maialino, his affectionate vision of a Roman trattoria, with a name that means "little pig". The name of Quinto Quarto, a brick-walled osteria in Greenwich Village, refers to offal, the “fifth quarter” of the animal that Roman butchers kept for themselves.
In addition, Sora Lella, a branch of a restaurant in the Trastevere district of Rome, has opened in SoHo. (Emporio, another recently opened spot in that neighborhood, claims to be a Roman trattoria but without strong evidence on the menu.) Several Roman-style pizzerias bake oblong pies that are portioned with scissors, including Numero 28 Pizzeria Romana in SoHo, where the artichoke pizza is particularly appealing. 
The chef at Testaccio, Ivan Beacco, delves into the Roman repertory with sturdy Roman-style baked gnocchi, made with semolina, not potatoes or ricotta. He and other chefs are happily serving earthy braised oxtails, golden fried sweetbreads and spicy casseroles of tripe. Some other increasingly common specialties include artichokes slowly cooked and seasoned with Rome’s inevitable mint, or fried crisp in the Jewish Ghetto-style, and snowy house-cured salt cod, often served with pasta. 
Properly made spaghetti alla carbonara mingles guanciale, the unsmoked bacon made from pork cheeks, with eggs and cheese, and no cream. The lush yet straightforward dish may have gotten its name from having been cooked over charcoal. Spaghetti alla gricia, meanwhile, is a shepherd’s supper, combining pasta, guanciale and pecorino. Period. Spaghetti all’arrabbiata doesn’t stint on the chilies. 
The Roman newcomers join Cacio e Pepe and Lupa, two downtown restaurants that years ago began taking cues from unassuming Roman trattorias. 
“After we opened Babbo we wanted to do something simpler, an urban trattoria",  said Joseph Bastianich, who opened Lupa with Mario Batali 11 years ago. "We were ahead of the curve. Roman food makes a strong statement but it’s easy to understand. Now New Yorkers want food that’s simple and authentic". Others predated even Lupa, including Sandro’s, Tevere and Lattanzi. 
Recently, Roman food has become easier for home cooks, not just chefs, to prepare. Excellent guanciale is available from domestic artisanal producers. Puntarelle, the peppery dandelion-like greens that the Romans dress with anchovies, are being grown locally. Cheese shops stock sheep milk ricotta and Roman pecorino, even the younger cacio de Roma. In spring there will be baby lamb at some butchers. Special cuts of pasta, including bavette, a kind of thin, rumpled tagliatelle, are also turning up in markets and online.
With such ingredients no longer a challenge, "we can offer things that would have been much harder to do 20 years ago", said Nick Anderer, the chef of Maialino, who, like Mr. Meyer, became attracted to the food of Rome after studying there. “We know how to make fresh bavette,” he said of the pasta that he serves with salt cod, and which is turned out daily in the kitchen at Maialino, along with tonnarelli for cacio e pepe. Parts of Mr. Anderer’s lamb become coppa, or head cheese in Rome.
But it’s not always so easy. "You probably won’t see rigatoni alla pajata anytime soon",  Mr. Anderer said. Pajata is what Romans call the intestines of milk-fed lamb, a delicacy contributing creaminess and a musky flavor to this exotic Roman specialty. Good luck on this one, for now. 
But there are plenty of other dishes for chefs and home cooks to discover: hand-cut spaghetti from Viterbo near Rome, called lombrichelli, which is similar to spaghetti alla chitarra and is tossed in a concentrated tomato sauce spiked with chili; and quickly sautéed lamb chops alla scottadito ("finger-burning"), or lamb stewed in Rome’s signature Frascati wine, as at Maialino.
Though you may find the Frascati for the stew pot in your local wine shop, the region of Lazio offers relatively little in the way of distinctive wines, with whites better known and often of higher quality than the rustic reds. So in the glass, even with Roman food, Tuscany might still be your destination. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/
dining/13roman.html?emc=eta1
 

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