Great Foods of Italy: Supplì

Halfway between finger food and street food, the supplì al telefono is the Romans’ favorite fried food, which they may eat on the go or while sitting down at a trattoria at the start of a meal.  

Supplì is a breaded, deep-fried rice croquette with an elongated shape traditionally filled with mozzarella, rice pre-simmered in a tomato-based sauce, and ragù. They’re known as supplì “on the phone” due to the stringy fiordilatte that creates a thread when the crunchy rice ball is broken in two. 

The first menu to mention the “soplis di riso” was at the Trattoria della Lepre on Via Condotti, back in 1874. In the early 1900s, Roman chef Ada Boni codified the supplì in her cookbook “La cucina romana”.

When writing about his Roman trip in 1904, the writer James Joyce described the figure of the ‘supplittaro,’ men who cooked supplì in a large pot steaming with oil on the sidewalks (the definition of street food before there was one), to serve them hot.

In addition to mozzarella fiordilatte and tomato sauce, the original recipe included chicken giblets. That filling has been supplanted by beef or pork ragu, better suited to today’s more delicate palates. In recent years, the traditional base of the supplì has become the starting point for the most diverse fillings. Thus, there are those who reproduce the classics of Roman cuisine, such as  gricia, carbonara, amatriciana. Or you may find them with porchetta, tripe sauce, or even ingredients from other regions, from Calabria’s ’nduja to Sicily’s pistachio cream.

The supplì is reminiscent of Sicilian arancini, but they differ in shape, filling and breading.

Some of the best places where to try supplì in Rome are I supplì, Bonci’s Pizzarium, Pommidoro, Al Mattarello d’oro, and Supplizio.