Fonduteria Lucifero - (ROME)

Fonduteria Lucifero

Via dei Capellari, 28 

00186 Rome

This tavern-like restaurant offers every type of fondue imaginable, from swiss, to chocolate, via bourguignonne, including the mouth-watering Piemontese special: A Tomino cheese fondue laced with the highly prized White truffle of Alba, which, in the week we dined there, was checking in at a cool 6 euros per gram. 
This is not a place to bring even open minded vegetarian friends, unless they want to be stuck munching on the delicious but limited range of vegetable appetizers as you wrap your teeth around any one of the delectable cuts of beef on the menu, all of which can also come sprinkled with a few shavings of said truffle… This is a strictly meat and cheese parlour.


We started with a generous antipasto of less common and therefore more interesting salamis, good quality mozzarella (both unusual for a relatively cheap Roman eatery) and a full platter of grilled, roasted, fired and stuffed fresh veggies all of which are laid out nicely on the bar as you walk into the joint. 
The portion was just right to leave room to actually finish the main course rather than feel guilty over leaving half of it.
Despite the host not showing us the wine list, claiming it was as long as the Bible and he could offer us the Reader‘s Digest format from memory, we didn’t get rumbled on the wine and enjoyed an excellent Nero D’Avola which conformed exactly to the type of wine we had asked to drink and at E 17.50, knocked the socks off value-wise of the usually acidic house wines most other places offer at around 11 euros a pop.


The only black note was the music, there’s enough good ambiance in the place to be able to do without any at all, or at least something befitting the simple whitewashed cavernous walls and checkered tablecloths, rather than the commercial radio pap, however, we were at the only table in the vicinity of the speakers and would’ve been quite undisturbed in any other part of the restaurant. I finished full, content, merry and not in the least bit stuffed or under the impression of having filled my gullet my face with ten tons of cow. All in all, a jolly night out!