Bad Roman

Columbus Circle's Italian Room

Midtown Manhattan's restaurant identity has long been split between grand-occasion tasting menus and fast-lunch counters, with very little in between worth lingering over. The third floor of 10 Columbus Circle sits in that gap. Bad Roman occupies a perch above the Time Warner Center retail floors, a location that might suggest the kind of mall-adjacent dining that serious eaters tend to dismiss. What plays out inside runs counter to that expectation. The room operates with the informal confidence of a neighborhood trattoria that has found its regulars and decided it no longer needs to impress anyone.

That trattoria ethos, the idea that Italian-American cooking works well when it stops performing and starts feeding, is harder to sustain in a high-traffic midtown address than it looks. The restaurants in this tier of Columbus Circle have historically leaned on location rather than kitchen seriousness. Bad Roman, under chef Nick Gaube, has moved the balance the other way. Bad Roman, under chef Nick Gaube, has moved the balance the other way.

Where It Sits in New York's Italian Dining Scene

New York's Italian table covers a wide range. At one end, Via Carota in the West Village defines the seasonal, produce-led northern Italian approach that has become the city's critical benchmark for the category. At the other, Babbo on Waverly Place built its reputation on bold, occasionally confrontational Italian-American reinterpretation. Ai Fiori in Midtown occupies the formal, multi-course end, while Altro Paradiso leans into the lighter, all-day European café register.

Bad Roman sits outside all of those categories. Its Italian-American register is less about innovation or formality and more about the kind of generosity that made the tradition durable in the first place: portions that assume you are hungry, sauces built to be mopped up, a wine list intended to be drunk rather than studied. In this sense it has more in common with the spirit of Ammazzacaffè than with the white-tablecloth Italian houses that still occupy blocks nearby.

Opinionated About Dining ranked Bad Roman at number 417 on its 2025 list of leading restaurants in North America.

The Trattoria Tradition in a City That Doesn't Stand Still

The word trattoria has been used so liberally in American cities that it has nearly lost its meaning. In Italy, the category implies specific things: family ownership, a short menu built around what is available and what the kitchen knows, an expectation that the same customers will return the following week. American versions of that model often capture the aesthetic without the substance, trading on checkered tablecloths and house wine carafes while running kitchens that change menus quarterly and staff monthly.

What makes the trattoria ethos worth taking seriously, when a kitchen actually commits to it, is the accountability it creates. A room that draws regulars cannot coast. The 4.1 average across more than 1,100 Google reviews for Bad Roman tells that story in aggregate.

For comparison, the formal Italian rooms in New York that occupy the Michelin-starred tier, and the ambitious modern American kitchens such as Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Alinea in Chicago, or The French Laundry in Napa, are chasing a different kind of recognition. So are the destination Italian rooms abroad, from 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana in Hong Kong to cenci in Kyoto, where Italian technique migrates into new contexts. Bad Roman is doing something more grounded: building a room that works for people who want to eat Italian food in New York without negotiating a tasting menu or a six-week booking window.