Trattoria Da Cesare al Casaletto

Ownership at the table, wine in hand

The cellar and the room meet in the same gesture when Leonardo Vignoli, chef at Trattoria Da Cesare al Casaletto in Rome, moves from the pass to a bottle. At Da Cesare, his role has never been a single station. He is chef, owner, and sommelier, holding the restaurant grammar close enough that a plate of cacio e pepe and a local wine can answer to the same hand. The trattoria began in the 1950s as La Palma, took the Cesare name in the 1970s, and entered its present chapter in 2009, when Vignoli and Maria Pia Cicconi took charge. The lineage here is not dressed up as nostalgia. It sits in continuity: Roman cooking, family table habits, cellar judgment, and the daily correction that comes from serving the same dishes to people who know exactly how they should taste. Vignoli’s work is built on that fixed point. Da Cesare gives him a house style rather than a stage, and the discipline is practical, with ownership and service folded into the same evening.

Cacio e pepe as a house measure

The program stays close to Roman trattoria craft: carbonara, amatriciana, gricia, rigatoni alla pajata when the season allows, coda alla vaccinara, trippa alla romana, baccalà alla romana, and lamb chops breaded and fried. Vignoli’s cacio e pepe is the signature, not because the dish needs ornament, but because it leaves so little cover. Cheese, pepper, pasta water, timing, and heat have to arrive together. The fritti carry the same directness. Fried gnocchi arrive with cacio e pepe sauce; zucchini blossoms, cod filets, supplì, anchovies, baby squid, eggplant with arrabbiata, and beef balls keep the first part of the meal at the level of the hand and the fryer. The wine list reaches beyond a token pairing shelf, with over 300 labels and a focus on local, artisanal, and natural bottles. That matters in this room because Vignoli’s sommelier work is not separate from the food. The cellar does not decorate the trattoria. It gives the Roman dishes another register.

The last tram and the vine-covered patio

The room sits on Via del Casaletto, 45, in Monteverde Nuovo, beyond the central circuit and close to the last stop of the number 8 tram. That distance has become part of the place’s rhythm. The dining room reads as a Roman neighborhood room rather than a polished destination, even when the tables are full; the vine-covered patio and veranda take the work outside in warmer months. The pass has to hold its pace through pasta, fritti, meat, fish, and the dinner-only pizza program, while the room keeps the language of a trattoria intact: plates moving quickly, bottles chosen with care, regulars measuring the cooking against memory. Nothing about the setting asks the food to perform beyond itself. It has enough to do.

A laboratory close to the restaurant

The next part of Vignoli’s work has stayed nearby. Since 2023, he and Cicconi have also been co-owners of Cesare al Pellegrino in Rome; in 2024, they added Da Cesare Laboratorio at Largo Pepere 5, built around the wish to make bread in-house. Vignoli has described that project plainly: “The idea of opening a laboratory was born first and foremost from a dream: that of being able to make our own bread. Fortunately, we managed to find a space nearby, very close to the restaurant, that could support bread-making.” The extension matters because it begins with the most basic part of the table, bread, and keeps the circuit tied to Da Cesare al Casaletto.