On the sixth floor of the 19th-century Palazzo Marignoli, overlooking Piazza San Silvestro, lies one of the most beautiful terraces in downtown Rome, and as of May 5, 2026, it’s also home to QUID – Unique Italian Dining. It’s as if this magnificent location—an essential part of the experience—were embraced by the capital itself. But the cuisine deserves a story of its own: here’s what you’ll find at Enrico Bartolini’s new restaurant, his first major project in Rome.
Photos by Andrea Di Lorenzo and Benedetta Bassanelli
Juan Camilo Quintero: Who Is the Chef at the Helm of Enrico Bartolini’s Roman Restaurant
Quintero left Colombia at a very young age: “I arrived at nineteen with fifty euros in my pocket. I was working in Bogotá at an Italian restaurant, and I was very curious and interested in Italy and its cuisine. I’d always wanted to come here to study and work. My financial situation back then wasn’t the best, but thanks to a scholarship from the University of Pollenzo, I made it to Bra. I graduated after three years of study.”
During that time, Quintero met Carlo Petrini, who passed away last May at the age of seventy-six: “Carlo was someone very close to me, who helped me a great deal and understood my passion and the struggle I faced supporting myself. He gave me the opportunity to stay at the Società Gastronomica, a house outside Bra where students and others could organize events. I was the caretaker of this house, which is how I was able to have a place to stay, because things were tough back then. My memories of Pollenzo and Carlo have always been my starting point. I’ve been living in Italy for sixteen years, and it’s thanks to him that I’ve been able to accomplish so many things, in my own small way.”
Dreams and aspirations have taken on a form that Juan Camilo himself could hardly have imagined: QUID embodies a solid business foundation, a long-standing collaboration with Enrico Bartolini, and a culinary style that is entirely his own. The restaurant’s name incorporates part of Quintero’s last name but is also a sort of declaration of belonging: “It’s a nice way of putting it, because I feel Italian at heart and I also have Italian citizenship. But I was born in Colombia, grew up in the United States, and there’s a very unique background that always comes through in what I cook.”
QUID is the Rome-based chapter in the partnership between Allianz and Enrico Bartolini, a collaboration that has already proven successful in Borgo San Felice: “It’s the company that oversees all aspects of hospitality for the group. It manages three wineries—the one in Chianti Classico, the one in Bolgheri, and the one in Montalcino—as well as the hotel and this building.” In Castelnuovo Berardenga, in the province of Siena, it was Juan Camilo who led Il Poggio Rosso to a Michelin star in 2020, which was then reconfirmed in 2025 under the guidance of the new head chef, Stelios Sakalis. Quintero continues: “I worked for the hotel for six and a half years, so I earned the shareholder’s trust to launch a project that would also bear my name. After many years of thinking about what it could become, we decided to renovate this terrace, one of the most beautiful in Rome.”
The restaurant
The dimensions speak to the scale of the project: 480 square meters of interior space and a 1,500-square-meter rooftop, with 54 seats in the dining room and the capacity to accommodate 150 people outdoors for events. This is a major project, where the experience begins as soon as you step onto the stairs. The building’s renovation, overseen by Riccardo Bichara, incorporates art into the building’s daily life:in fact, the Vertical Gallery stretches across all six floors, allowing visitors to view works from the Allianz collection, and has been open to the public since the restaurant’s grand opening.
The spaces at QUID, on the other hand, were designed by architect Stefano Guidotti: marble, brass, and lime finishes on the interior, while outside, travertine is featured in the flooring, seating, planters, and sculptures. It is a highly ambitious project that makes Quintero’s task a challenging one; although he enjoys nearly complete creative autonomy, he maintains a close relationship with Enrico Bartolini: “I have a great deal of freedom. Enrico Bartolini is, first and foremost, my teacher and mentor. I’ve always admired him and learned so much from what he does. He’s a consultant for our group; he oversees the hotel, lends a hand to Stelios at Poggio Rosso, and collaborates with us.” His freedom goes hand in hand with an awareness of financial responsibilities: “The menu must be well-thought-out and of high quality, and the wine selection must be consistent; however, the project must also be financially viable, and Enrico is very good at this. We’ve always worked very well together because there’s a lot of give-and-take and mutual respect: our collaboration has been going on since 2019, and we talk every other day.”
The Menu
The structure of the dining experience gives guests the freedom to choose. The menu consists of three courses, indicated by Roman numerals: appetizers, followed by pasta, rice dishes, and soups, and finally the main courses. You can create your own dining experience or opt for the tasting menu, which features a signature dish and seasonal selections, with a greater focus on seafood during the warmer months and on meat in the fall.
The dishes we tasted were summer specialties. After a series of delicious amuse-bouches served on the terrace, the zucchini salad with pistachios, orange blossoms, and wasabi arrived—fresh yet with intense, bold aromas: “The trombetta zucchini is a prized seasonal vegetable: I cook with ingredients from all over the world, at a time when we’ve almost been forced to use only local products for ethical reasons. Let’s say that’s true and fair enough, but in my opinion, it’s been taken a bit too far: we were cooking things from the garden while the wine list featured Australian wines—we needed to return to a certain balance. I don’t want to talk about yet another garden, at the risk of sounding a bit repetitive, but here we have a project similar to the one at Borgo San Felice—namely, a community garden—which we run at a facility run by nuns here in Rome”.
Next comes the refreshing raw yellowtail with physalis, a yellow fruit native to the Andes, caviar, and vanilla. The fish is briefly marinated and served with green beans, vanilla-infused oil, and a tangy sauce made from butter and physalis. The caviar adds a lovely savory note to finish. The third dish, another superb expression of flavor, features cherry tomatoes, at the peak of the season: “It’s a sort of ceviche or aguachile—here, too, we’re drawing a bit on Latin American influences—but it’s a vegetarian dish”. The flavorful accompanying sauce is made with pineapple and combava leaves, while the cherry tomatoes have different fillings: goat cheese or miso and hazelnuts, with herbs rounding out the dish. The refined, utterly delicious toasted pine nut ravioli “are served in a seafood soup made with mixed fish, prepared in a very classic style, with tomato and herbs. Our special touch comes when the soup is finished and strained to concentrate all the flavors of the sea: we make it creamier with crème fraîche.” The dish is rounded out with baby squid, scallions, and grapefruit.
The risotto with various varieties of olives, wild boar, and pine, on the other hand, evokes strong earthy notes: “It’s made in the classic style, and when we stir in the cream, we add four varieties of olives and serve it on a carpaccio of wild boar tenderloin.” It’s surrounded by a fragrant wild boar sauce flavored with pine. In the red mullet in a seed crust with peanuts and humpback shrimp, we find an ingredient that Quintero feels is close to his roots: “The peanut is a plant native to South America, even though it’s widely used in Asia and pretty much everywhere else, and it pairs very well with fish”. The red mullet, cleaned and coated in seeds, is seared on the grill and remains delicately cooked through to the center. The sauce, made with fish stock and toasted peanuts, is particularly delicious. The gobbetti are lightly smoked and given “a quick sear on the grill. This way, you can taste the crispiness of the fish, the sweetness of the shrimp, and then the savory richness and nuttiness of the peanuts”.
Extremely elegant is the Lucanian Dolomites lamb selected by Michele Varvara, cooked over charcoal: “We serve it with a cream of toasted sesame and melt-in-your-mouth eggplant, fried and then glazed in a concentrated vegetable stock. The sauce is made with lamb offal and roses.” The fragrant dessert with bergamot, capers, and saffron evokes the Mediterranean: “It’s a dessert inspired a bit by Southern Italy.” From the house outside Bra to the terrace of Palazzo Marignoli—a wonderful journey.
INFO
Piazza di S.Silvestro, 8, 00187 Roma RM
T. 06 9826 1430
