My favorite restaurant in Rome in the last decade describes itself as “a haunt for foodies, for Roman socialites, for curious passers-by and for tourists with a more refined taste,” but aside from my wife and I, who disdain the latter descriptive, I have rarely spotted a tourist at Due Ladroni.

An early 20th century classic, its name—which means two thieves—was given to the owners in the 1950s after they raised the level of service and in tandem the prices at what had been a local osteria for the area around Piazza Nicosia. It’s a little square in the city’s historical center known, if at all, as the home of a Renaissance fountain commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII. One of the first modern fountains in Rome, it originally stood in the far larger, better-known Piazza del Popolo, home of Da Bolognese, a tourist and celebrity magnet.

I don’t always avoid tourist-y restaurants; sometimes they attain that dubious status through the quality of their food, location, service, or décor. When I first patronized good restaurants in Europe, Michelin guides could still be trusted, but more often, I learned of them through local friends. That those friends, at that time, were powerful people in fashion (for I was then a fashion columnist for the New York Times) was usually an indication of refined taste.

It was Carla Fendi, one of the five famous Fendi sisters, who first took me to Ristorante Nino, a reliable Tuscan on via Borgogogna, then across the street from the Fendi offices and store. And it was Franco Savorelli di Lauriano, the Milanese PR man who represented Fendi and Giorgio Armani, who pointed me to many more via La Moda a Tavola, a tiny restaurant guide to the fashionable world he created in the 1980s for another client, Helena Rubenstein. I still treasure a copy he hand-updated for me a few years later, that led me to Pierluigi on Piazza dei Ricci, long before it was blinged into another dimension.

So, why Due Ladroni? When the very well-connected Roman who first brought me there suggested a return trip last month, I jumped at the chance after several less than stellar meals. Pierluigi having long since crossed the Rubicon, we’d returned to Nino, hopefully, only to find it so full of Americans, it felt like a Serafina. Due Ladroni was designed to be the antidote.

Doted over by one of the current family owners, Michela Di Maria, we ate late, like Romans. All around us were impeccably dressed locals, among them a group of dark-suited, soft-spoken men one of our party identified as members of Opus Dei, the secretive, politically-powerful Vatican group.

Like them, we ate very well—I had raw gamberi rosso and grilled scampi and a deliciously crisp white wine. But best of all, all we could hear was Italian.

Due Ladroni
Piazza Nicosia 24, Rome
dueladroni.com