Galleries' guide to Rome's food scene/4
When it comes to drinking, in the art world hardly anyone ever backs out. A good bar is often the right place to extend a conversation, bring a working day to a close, move through the packed rhythm of a gallery weekend, or raise a glass to the beginning of something new. In recent years, Rome’s drinking scene has also taken on an increasingly solid and recognizable profile, with contemporary venues, ambitious projects, and a level of quality now capable of standing out well beyond the city itself.
This first alcoholic guide brings together three establishments that today represent some of the highest expressions to be found in the city — and in the world.
“The new Drink Kong venue at Via dei Prefetti, 22. The best and most contemporary cocktail bar in Rome.”
Drink Kong is now a project spread across two distinct addresses, each with a clearly defined identity. The Monti venue, by now the historic one, remains the more immersive and immediately recognizable: a space built around a retro-futurist imagination, where lighting, materials, and nocturnal rhythm accompany a cocktail offering that is technical, structured, and strongly distinctive.
The new space on Via dei Prefetti, on the other hand, shifts the focus toward a more essential dimension, with a more direct approach to the great classics and a less theatrical, more measured atmosphere. Two different yet complementary places, showing the project’s ability to articulate different languages while preserving its rigor, precision, and a very clear vision of contemporary drinking.
Hidden away in a narrow alley just a few steps from Campo de’ Fiori, Jerry Thomas is Italy’s first true speakeasy and one of the places that changed the way people drink in Rome. The entrance is discreet, almost invisible, and still follows the logic of a club, with a password and reservation required. Inside, low lighting and vintage-inspired furnishings create an intimate, almost clandestine atmosphere. The offering is centered on the great classics of mixology, executed with rigor and precision, without unnecessary flourishes, though often reinterpreted in a strongly contemporary key. Alongside these is a series of new signature drinks that have established it among the best bars in Europe. A place that remains a point of reference, more for its coherence than for its scene.
Just behind the Pantheon, the bar at Hotel de la Minerve — now Orient Express La Minerva — is a space that works through stratification rather than immediate effect. Hugo Toro’s design brings classical elements into dialogue with contemporary interventions: columns, marble, and the statue of the goddess Minerva coexist with glossy surfaces and more graphic details. The result is a finely calibrated setting, where the historical dimension remains central but is reinterpreted with a certain formal precision. The offering follows the same line, moving between great classics and measured variations, without excess.
