Casetta Rossa is not just a place where to eat, even though all the dishes are good and well-cooked without any trickery nor deception. Located in the heart of Garbatella, one of the last Rome’s ‘real’ districts, maybe the truest too, this is a place where to spend a short, but intense, life experience. Casetta Rossa is the successful attempt to link the genuineness of the cuisine to a sincere conviviality imbued with values that in this place re-emerge as if by magic.
Casetta Rossa famous façade: ‘public space of self-government’.
Casetta Rossa is a self-managed social space, to which many people try to bring a contribution of ideas, commitment and humanity. Calling it a ‘restaurant’ or even a ‘trattoria’ is reductive. The idea of the managers is to make Casetta Rossa the pivot of many initiatives that can serve the people of a still popular neighbourhood to live better, or at least to understand what is happening in these hard times.
The young managers disseminate traces of their project everywhere, in order to pass their message even to new customers who know nothing about it. On the façade, next to the name of the venue, it says: ‘public space of self-government‘. The interior has about twenty seats, but already by spring the tables are set up in the park Cavallo Pazzo. The hot season is also animated by ‘La festa dell’altra estate’ (The other Summer Party), which brings initiatives, small shows, and debates on topical issues to the park.
During spring and summer, the external space extend for a better experience.
Sticking to what concerns food, you get in line – better to book – and in the meantime you read the menu where the typical Roman dishes stand out: rigatoni all’amatriciana, meatballs with sauce, but also pesto sauces, vegetarian proposals and extraordinary wine donuts to finish. You think you’re ordering one to end your dinner, but they bring you a full bag at your table. You choose your dishes and the first surprise concerns the bill, between 15 and 20 euros. Then the second wonder comes: despite the tables are full and an intense queue, the service is quick and friendly.
The famous external oven of Casetta Rossa, whit its particular design.
It may be that when you go to a restaurant and eat well, the table helps the memory. But at Casetta Rossa you can really breathe popular air, modernity that smacks of ancient values. It is a different place from the frenetic, flat and standardised soulless offerings. You leave with the desire to say ‘bye’, as when you leave the house of a friend. And as you wander through the green lanes of Garbatella, you feel that ‘another world is possible’. As the people of Casetta Rossa say.
