Sotto SottoNazareno was right.

quality ingredients from Italy, too much wine and “le savoir faire” of chefs who’ve been behind the same stoves for the past 28 years equals culinary bliss. Topped off with vecchio amaro del capo of course.

Sotto Sotto has been cooking Roman on Avenue Road since 1993, and it’s been feeding film-festival stars for most of that time. Drake name-dropped it in “Pound Cake”. none of that matters once the plates land.

the carpaccio has its own good story. Giuseppe Cipriani invented it at Harry’s Bar in Venice around 1950, for a countess whose doctor had told her to eat raw meat, and named it after Vittore Carpaccio, the Renaissance painter who loved a deep red. here it comes with stracciatella di burrata on top: the creamy heart of a burrata, from Andria in Puglia, where mozzarella is torn into shreds and soaked in cream. raw beef and cold cream. it works every time. next to it, octopus off the grill, charred at the tips, the way it should be.

then the carbonara, which in a Roman kitchen isn’t a dish so much as a test. egg, cured pork, pecorino, pepper, nothing to hide behind. they passed.

tiramisù comes from Treviso, where Le Beccherie says it first put it on a menu in 1972. the name is Venetian dialect for “pick me up”, which is exactly what it’s for. this one was pistachio, which nobody in Treviso asked for, and nobody at the table complained about.

and the amaro. Vecchio Amaro del Capo comes from Calabria, the toe of the boot: twenty-nine herbs and roots, orange and mandarin peel, liquorice, chamomile, and in Calabria they keep the bottle in the freezer and pour it into small glasses, ice cold. it’s what you drink when the table is done but the night isn’t.