Enoteca La Torre

The pass held since February 2016

At the pass, Domenico Stile leads as Head Chef at Enoteca La Torre Villa Laetitia in Rome, sending Campanian memory through a room built for formal quiet. He was born in Castellammare di Stabia, near the Sorrentine Peninsula, on August 1, 1989, and began at hotel school at age 15.

Stile has held this station since February 2016. Enoteca La Torre earned a Michelin star in 2017, when he was 27, and a second in 2022; the house also holds three forks from Gambero Rosso and four caps from L'Espresso. Those numbers matter because the cooking remains more specific than the applause. Smoked buffalo butter, red mullet, and lamb sit in the vocabulary of the restaurant not as trophies, but as working materials, handled through a modern Italian frame inside Villa Laetitia.

Mediterranean structure at the table

The program moves between tasting menu and à la carte, with the tasting format giving Stile the longer line. His cooking favors clean Mediterranean flavors, table-side finishes, and a controlled sequence of intensity rather than theatrical excess. Published menus and accounts have pointed to ricotta ravioli with sage butter, beef tartare seasoned with truffle oil, egg with truffles and buffalo taleggio, cod on scorzonera, rice with cannolicchi clams and asparagus, and Saint Honoré with thyme and lemon. The list reads like a station map: dairy, shellfish, bitter roots, citrus, herb, heat.

The wine program is treated as part of the method, not a second act. Rudy Travagli, the restaurant manager and sommelier, leads an Italian-leaning cellar described for its breadth and pairing work, matching Stile's progression with bottles that can carry both fat and acidity. In a room where the service is formal and the menu often unfolds course by course, that pairing discipline has to be exact. A red mullet dish asks a different kind of attention than lamb. The glass has to know the difference.

A villa room with the river outside

The room sits inside Villa Laetitia in Prati, on Lungotevere delle Armi, in a restored Liberty villa associated with Anna Fendi Venturini and curated by Giulio Cesare Delettrez Fendi. Vast glass windows look toward the Tiber and the gardens, bringing daylight and distance into a dining room that stays intimate rather than grandstanding. Marble floors, refined furnishings, a tea room, a bar for aperitifs, and the Sala Castellani give the house its sequence before the plate arrives.

At service, the pass and the room keep different kinds of silence. The kitchen sends out measured modern Italian cooking; the floor receives it with a slower rhythm, enough space between tables for conversation to remain private. This is not a trattoria version of Rome, and it does not need to borrow that energy. Its register is villa, cellar, table, garden, and the last impression can rest on smoked buffalo butter at Villa Laetitia.