The Absolute Best Pasta Places Stanley Tucci Ate At In Rome On 'Searching For Italy,' Ranked

CNN's Emmy-award-winning travel show, "Searching for Italy," follows actor Stanley Tucci as he makes his way through the most iconic cities of the Bel Paese, reconnecting with his heritage through food. The two-season series opens with the Oscar-nominated actor making his way through Naples for its pizza and the Amalfi Coast for its oversized lemons. Episode 2, Rome, explores the Eternal City's iconic pasta dishes. Italy is a smorgasbord of pasta, from Strada delle Orecchiette in the town of Bari — the street famous for fresh homemade pasta in the Puglia region — to the picturesque town of Pontremoli, known as the birthplace of Italy's oldest known pasta. However, there are four specific Roman pastas: carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana, and alla gricia, which are essential for any pasta fan visiting the capital city to try.

The restaurants portrayed range from eateries using multi-generation recipes to avant-garde Michelin-star establishments putting unexpected spins on Italian classics. The actor also visited a few non-sit-down-restaurant style eateries, like Bar San Calisto, a no-frills cafe frequented by locals, La Reginella in the city's Jewish quarter for seasonal fried artichokes, and Pro Loco Dol, a deli specializing in produce from Italy's famed Lazio region. However, the episode's pasta highlights are what most visitors to Rome should gravitate to, so we dove into the pasta places that Tucci visits in the episode and compared them based on authenticity, dining experience, consistency, and essentially how likely diners are to claim that what they ate there was one of the best dishes of their lives. Of course, if you're still jonesing for more, look to Bologna, the underrated Italian city known for some of the world's best pasta, which is where Tucci heads off to in Episode 3, exploring the region's traditional Parmigiano cheese (in Parma) and balsamic vinegar (in Modena).

While all the restaurants on this list are popular, none come close to Armando al Pantheon. True to its name, it provides a dramatic view of the eponymous ancient monument and, despite being in one of the city's most touristic parts, continues to serve authentic, high-quality Italian cuisine. This traditional trattoria is where Stanley Tucci grabbed a lunch of rigatoni all'amatriciana — pasta with tomato and pork. The menu here is a mouthwatering list of Italian crowd pleasers. In the episode, Tucci explores some of Rome's most iconic eateries but also soaks in the colorful stories behind each eatery that hosts him. Run by the same family for three generations, Armando al Pantheon is the sort of Italian eatery where the dishes are as you'd expect from one of the best pasta joints in Rome.

While you can expect long wait times and mostly tourists seated here, which also drives the price up (expect to pay around $17 for the famed rigatoni all'amatriciana), the restaurant has a high rating of 4.4 on Google and 4.1 on Yelp with consistently good reviews. If you're looking for a pocket-friendly bite, a few minutes walk from the Pantheon lies Pastificio Guerra, which serves some of Rome's cheapest pasta dripping with flavor and homemade perfection.

The Rome episode features a masterclass on pasta carbonara with DJ and gastronomist Daniele De Michele, aka "Donpasta." This is followed by Stanley Tucci sampling the pasta dish at Pommidoro dal 1890, widely known for serving one of the best carbonaras in town. Now in its fifth generation of family ownership, this restaurant is the quintessential Italian eatery you want to sample while in Rome. They also make their own olive oil, which is liberally added to the food.

The restaurant is situated near Rome's Termini station in the heart of the San Lorenzo district, which was once a working-class neighborhood but is now an artsy bohemian corner of the city. The restaurant is not as chic as some of the others on this list, leaning more towards a rustic ambience and food presentation. However, you can still expect to pay between $12 and $15 for mains and pasta dishes. As expected, reservations are recommended since this is a popular restaurant, and you can get in touch online or over the phone.

Of the four restaurants known for their pasta that Stanley Tucci visited, SantoPalato balances experimental and traditional Italian cuisine best. Chef Sarah Cicolini's modern trattoria specializes in offal dishes that highlight homely Italian favorites with a modern touch. While it serves up some mean pasta dishes, including classics like carbonara and amatriciana, the dish that gets the most love is SantoPalato's signature oxtail meatball, served with a celery, peanut, and powdered cacao sauce. Review after review highlights this dish as their favorite, and it is also what Tucci ate during his visit to the restaurant. He also had the trippa alla Romana, which is tripe cooked in tomato, and the frittata with chicken.

Located less than 10 minutes by car from the Colosseum, the restaurant is quite easy to get to, provided you don't get taken in by the taxi scams that tourists face in Italy. Since there is limited seating, an online reservation is highly recommended, which you can make on the restaurant's website. Even though it has the look of a simple trattoria and serves "quinto quarto" or offal cuisine, this is a gourmet restaurant, so don't expect it to be cheap. Be prepared to spend around $40 per person for a meal, where you're hitting up this joint for its pasta or its array of other delicacies. 

By far the most experimental eatery on Stanley Tucci's Roman gastrotour, Bistrot64 is a Michelin guide restaurant curated by Japanese chef Kotaro Noda. The fare is Italian-inspired, made using Japanese cooking methods, which may sound too experimental to some. To be sure, this is not the first place that comes to mind when you consider authentic Italian food. However, where it excels is in capturing the essence of a dish. The restaurant's take on the classic cacio e pepe — made with Parmigiano and pecorino cheeses to strike the right balance between creaminess, umami notes, and aged-cheese sharpness — gets glowing praise again and again on reviews, and it also did from Stanley Tucci when he ate it here on "Searching for Italy."

Located slightly outside the city center and priced at par with a Michelin-starred restaurant since it is one, a meal at Bistro64 isn't a spur-of-the-moment affair. While the restaurant has consistently good reviews with a 4.4 on both Google and Yelp, this is not where you should go if you're looking for Italian classics. The restaurant features only tasting menus, which can also make customizations to your food difficult.

This ranking was made from the perspective of someone visiting Rome and looking to have the most delicious culinary experience that the eternal city has to offer, while still following in the footsteps of Stanley Tucci. Online reviews on Google and Yelp were taken into consideration. Over and above the number rating, we also looked at how consistently the restaurant delivered good food, not just over time but across the menu, by studying individual reviews. Since most diners will only visit each of these restaurants once, consistency is a significant factor. Also considered was which restaurants offered more customizability and options to suit different palates and dietary concerns.

This list is a ranking of "essential" pasta places when in Rome. If you didn't try a traditional, authentic carbonara, you would have missed out on more than if you skipped, say, a Michelin-star version of cacio e pepe. Compared side by side, some would argue that Bistrot64's cacio e pepe is a better dish. However, as essential pasta-eating experiences in Rome go, Pommidoro offers a more authentic one and is therefore ranked higher. Finally, prices were not taken into account since none of the restaurants in the list can be described as pocket-friendly, and how much you'd end up spending really depends on your meal. More importantly, visiting one of the best pasta joints of your life is not the occasion to be penny-pinching.