Acquolina

This modern, softly lit restaurant decorated in different shades of blue is situated in The First Roma hotel near Piazza del Popolo. Here, the young, professional staff offer attentive yet discreet service, so that all the attention is concentrated on talented chef Daniele Lippi’s cuisine. The chef creates two tasting menus – the first, shorter option focuses on fish dishes (the imaginative cuttlefish recipe influenced by Turkish flavours and the chef’s personal creativity is superb), while the second, longer and more elaborate menu also includes a few meat options. Whichever you choose, you’ll enjoy creative cuisine which is also hearty, generous and full of substance, and for which you’ll easily find the perfect pairing in one of the thousand different labels that feature on the wine list.

• Two-menu structure split between Periplo, focused on the aquatic world, and Anabasi Catabasi, which brings meat into the arc.
• Daniele Lippi’s kitchen frames the Mediterranean as a broad, cross-border pantry, not a single regional box.
• Set inside the First Roma hotel, close to Piazza del Popolo, with an ambitious wine list and sommelier-forward service.

Signature Ingredients

• Red prawn and red mullet, anchoring the sea-driven parts of the tasting menus.
• Tuna ventricina, used as a high-impact, cured-tuna note.
• Blue lobster and monkfish, used for richer, structured seafood courses.
• Guinea fowl, representing the meat side of the Anabasi Catabasi menu.

Menu

• Two tasting menus: Periplo, dedicated to the aquatic world, and Anabasi Catabasi, which includes meat as well.
• Both menus finish with an extended dessert sequence.

Style

• Creative Mediterranean cooking that treats the Mediterranean as a wide map rather than a single country, moving between sea and land in the same sentence.
• Dining room sits inside the First Roma hotel, a short walk from Piazza del Popolo, with a strong cellar and sommelier-led wine focus.