Why Anthony Bourdain Kept Coming Back to Cacio e Pepe in Rome—and How to Make It at Home

A Roman pasta with a global fan base

If you’re looking for a reliable compass when deciding what to eat on the road—or what to cook when you want to travel by way of your kitchen—few modern voices carry the same weight as Anthony Bourdain. Across multiple television shows, the late chef and author introduced viewers to culinary traditions around the world, often celebrating dishes that felt inseparable from the places that made them. He didn’t love everything he tried, and he never pretended otherwise. But when something truly impressed him, his enthusiasm could be impossible to forget.

One of the most enduring examples of that enthusiasm is tied to a dish that, on paper, looks almost too simple to inspire such devotion: cacio e pepe, a classic Roman pasta made with little more than noodles, black pepper, and Pecorino Romano cheese. Bourdain’s praise for it wasn’t casual. In fact, he suggested that if you had only a few hours in Rome, you should skip major sightseeing and go eat this pasta instead.

That’s a bold recommendation in a city famous for its history and landmarks. Yet it captures something Bourdain often emphasized: food isn’t a side quest to travel—it can be the point. And in the case of cacio e pepe, the point is not just the ingredients, but the technique and the experience of tasting it in the place where it belongs.

Bourdain’s Rome advice: make time for cacio e pepe

In a 2011 episode of The Layover, Bourdain offered a piece of Rome guidance that has been repeated by fans ever since. If your time in the city is short, he said, you should pass on the Vatican and head for a specific meal: cacio e pepe. The statement reads like a provocation, but it fits his broader approach to travel—prioritizing what feels immediate, local, and alive over what’s simply famous.

His fascination with the dish wasn’t theoretical. The moment he first tried a true Roman cacio e pepe was filmed years earlier during his first visit to Rome, when he was shooting season 6, episode 20 of No Reservations. On camera, his reaction was instant and physical. He joked, “I’m sure this is illegal somewhere,” and later escalated the praise further, calling it “the greatest thing in the history of the world.”

It’s the kind of line that could sound like exaggeration—until you remember how selective he could be. Bourdain was known for blunt honesty, and he didn’t hesitate to criticize foods he disliked. That contrast is part of what makes his cacio e pepe moment so memorable: it wasn’t polite approval, it was awe.

Where he ate it: a family-run restaurant in Trastevere

In the No Reservations episode, Bourdain didn’t name the restaurant where he tasted the pasta. Over time, however, fans have identified the spot as Roma Sparita, a family-owned restaurant in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood. For travelers hoping to follow the same trail, the good news is straightforward: Roma Sparita is still open, and cacio e pepe remains on the menu.

Roma Sparita’s approach, as described by those who seek it out, is rooted in the classic structure of the dish. The focus stays on the essentials—pasta, pepper, and Pecorino Romano—without adding extra ingredients to dress it up. That simplicity is the point: cacio e pepe is a dish that asks for restraint and rewards careful execution.

There is, however, one detail that makes the restaurant’s presentation especially distinctive. The pasta is served in a crispy bowl crafted from the same signature cheese. It’s a flourish that doesn’t change the dish’s identity, but it amplifies the sensory experience: the aroma of cheese, the heat of the pasta, and the contrast between creamy sauce and crisp edges.

What cacio e pepe is—and what it isn’t

Cacio e pepe is often described as minimalist, but that doesn’t mean it’s plain. The dish is built on a narrow set of ingredients and a technique that turns them into something richer than the list suggests. At its core, it’s pasta coated in a sauce formed by emulsifying starchy pasta water with Pecorino Romano, then finishing with black pepper.

One important point for home cooks is what the dish does not rely on. Unlike many Americanized pasta preparations, cacio e pepe doesn’t use heavy cream to create a rich texture. Its creaminess comes from cheese and pasta water working together. That’s part of why the dish is so admired: it’s a lesson in how far you can go with very little, if you understand the method.

Because the ingredient list is short, each choice matters. The pasta is not just a vehicle—it’s the star. The pepper is not a background seasoning—it is central to the flavor. And the cheese is not a garnish—it is the foundation of the sauce.

How to get closer to a Roman-style result at home

Eating cacio e pepe in Rome is difficult to replicate exactly, especially if you’re chasing the feeling of sitting down in a neighborhood restaurant and tasting a dish at its source. Still, it’s also a pasta you can make at home, and the simplicity of the ingredient list makes it approachable—provided you take the details seriously.

Several technique and ingredient choices can help home cooks move closer to a version that feels true to the dish’s Roman identity. The key is to treat those choices as essential rather than optional.

• Choose the right cheese. Pecorino Romano is the classic choice. It’s a salty sheep’s milk cheese, described as creamier and brighter in flavor than Parmigiano Reggiano. Because the dish depends so heavily on the cheese, substituting it changes the profile immediately.
• Use freshly ground black pepper. Freshly ground pepper has a stronger aroma and a more potent flavor than pre-ground pepper. In a dish where pepper is in the name, that difference matters.
• Cook the pasta to al dente. The noodles are meant to have a pleasant bite. Overcooking can make them gummy or mushy, which undermines the entire experience.

These are not fussy “chef tricks” so much as the baseline requirements for a dish that leaves nowhere to hide. When there are only a few ingredients, any weakness is obvious—and any excellence is, too.

The sauce challenge: glossy, emulsified, and not clumpy

For many cooks, the hardest part of cacio e pepe isn’t boiling pasta or grating cheese—it’s getting the sauce to come together smoothly. The goal is a glossy coating that clings to the noodles rather than a clump of melted cheese or a stringy mass.

Two commonly recommended adjustments focus on the pasta water, because it plays a central role in emulsifying the sauce.

• Use slightly less water to cook the pasta. Many chefs suggest cooking pasta in a smaller amount of water than usual. The idea is that the water becomes more concentrated with starch, making it easier to emulsify with the cheese later.
• Let the pasta water cool slightly before combining it with the cheese. If the water is too hot when it hits the Pecorino Romano, the cheese can seize and turn into a melty, stringy mess. Cooling the water a bit helps the sauce form more smoothly.

These steps speak to what makes cacio e pepe interesting: it’s simple, but not mindless. It rewards attention. It also explains why a great restaurant version can feel revelatory. When the technique is right, the dish tastes bigger than its parts.

Why this dish fits Bourdain’s philosophy of travel

Bourdain’s career was built on the idea that food can be an honest way to understand a place. He traveled widely, tasting dishes across all seven continents, and he didn’t treat every bite as automatically worthy of praise. That credibility made the moments of genuine admiration stand out.

His enthusiasm for cacio e pepe also reflects something else: the thrill of discovering that a “humble” dish can be transcendent. There are no rare ingredients here, no elaborate plating required, no complicated list of components. Yet the result can stop a seasoned eater in his tracks.

In that sense, cacio e pepe is a useful reminder for travelers and home cooks alike. You don’t always need the most elaborate meal in the room. Sometimes the most memorable thing is the dish that looks like nothing special—until you taste it.

For travelers and home cooks: two ways to meet the pasta

There are essentially two paths to experiencing Bourdain’s favorite Roman pasta. One is to eat it in Rome, where fans say he had his first unforgettable bite at Roma Sparita in Trastevere. The other is to make it yourself, accepting that the magic depends on technique as much as ingredients.

If you travel, you can seek out the classic approach: pasta, pepper, and Pecorino Romano, served with the confidence of a dish that doesn’t need embellishment. If you cook at home, you can focus on the same fundamentals—good cheese, freshly ground pepper, properly cooked pasta, and a careful hand with starchy water.

Either way, the appeal is the same. Cacio e pepe is a lesson in restraint, and a celebration of how a few well-chosen ingredients can become something that feels, in Bourdain’s words, almost impossibly good.

Keep practicing until it becomes second nature

Like many deceptively simple recipes, cacio e pepe gets easier with repetition. Once you’ve tried a few recipes and learned how the sauce behaves—how hot is too hot, how much pasta water is enough, how finely to grind the pepper—you can move from following instructions to cooking by feel.

That’s also part of the dish’s charm. It’s not just something to eat once; it’s something you can learn. And if you do, you’ll have a Roman staple in your repertoire—one that doesn’t require heavy cream, doesn’t depend on a long shopping list, and still delivers a rich, peppery, cheese-forward bowl of pasta that has convinced more than one traveler to rearrange their itinerary.