Here are four ladies, exhausted and beaten by the sun after a day of touring the Colosseum. We are waiting, impatiently, to eat a bowl of cacio e pepe at Restaurant X.

Restaurant X is not the real name of the restaurant.

It’s Roma Sparita actually.

Anthony Bourdain put this restaurant on the map when he professed his love for Roma Sparita’s cacio e pepe on an episode of No Reservations. He called it Restaurant X to keep both the location of the restaurant and its real name a secret.

In an effort to not “kill what he loved,” he left out a lot of specific information to keep tourists from ruining the place. It didn’t take long for the world to figure out all that he didn’t tell us.

So, when we were in Rome all those years ago, we (along with thousands of others, I’m sure) set out to find Restaurant X. Thanks to the Internet, we easily found Roma Sparita in the Trastevere section of Rome.

The cacio e pepe here is rich and fulfilling (the bowl itself is made of cheese).

We will always remember the experience, the taste, and sitting on this stoop in Rome.

We were what he feared. The NJ crew that crashed Roma Sparita. We mean, Restaurant X…