Surprisingly Good Pizza and Pasta at Beixinqiao's Bocca Della Verita

We realize Bocca Della Verita isn't exactly the newest Italian restaurant in town, but we decided it was worth checking out again to see what is happening in the Roman restaurant located directly above Yonghegong Dajie's 7/11. The question going in was: is this a restaurant we should be frequenting more often?

Their menu is surprisingly expansive – compiling soups, salads, multiple pages of pastas and pizzas, meat and fish dishes, and desserts – as is the restaurant's space, which you wouldn't expect given the slightly odd location, which we more often than not relate to a cheeky rice triangle on the way home from Café de la Poste. The staff were were attentive, unsurprising give that when we visited at lunch time on a week day, there was only one other person dining. 

We started with the cream of carrot soup (RMB 20), which came with croutons and a splash of olive oil. The soup was a little salty, but certainly gave us a hope that the rest of our food would be decent.

The pizza (RMB 58 for the pizza proscuitto e funghi, or bacon and mushroom as it was listed as in English) was surprisingly delicious – the dough not too thin nor too thick, and definitely not too sweet as can often be the case in China. The chef was not stingy with the toppings, which also tasted fresh, and the pizza was quite big. For RMB 58, this was a great pizza.

We also ordered the spaghetti carbonara (RMB 42), which I often find to be the real test of a restaurant's abilities in the kitchen as carbonara sauce is one that is relatively easy to get wrong. Apart from the fact that the plate looked fairly messy with pepper literally everywhere, the spaghetti was extremely creamy and included a good amount of scrumptious bacon.

Our final verdict? Bocca Della Verita may be better, or at least of equal quality, to Annie's. In a city where the latter is practically a cult (take into consideration the sheer number of awards Annie's wins in our Restaurant Awards every year), we realize that's a pretty bold claim, but what Bocca Della Verita also does best is serve up Italian comfort food at highly competitive prices.

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Photos: Margaux Schreurs