"Are you coming to Rome for a holiday?" the snowy-haired Italian sitting next to me on the plane asked.

"Actually, no," I said. "I'm coming to write about taxi drivers. And their favourite places to eat."

The man, an engineer and hobby archaeologist who was born and raised in Rome, slapped his hand to his forehead. "Our taxi drivers," he shook his head, "are terribili!"

He was not the first person to warn me about taxi drivers in Rome. Year after year, they are voted among the worst in the world. According to a 2011 EuroTest report by 22 European automobile clubs, "Rome's taxi drivers are aggressive, do not respect speed limits and traffic lights, and take long detours off the requested route."

In other words, if there was any city where taxi drivers were going to take me for a ride, it was Rome. But however naive it might have sounded to the Roman I met on the plane, I believed that some of the capital's 8,000 tassisti would show me where to find good things to eat in their city.

I based this belief on a steak. Five years ago I decided to climb into a random cab in Buenos Aires and ask the driver to take me to his favourite restaurant. After the taxista delivered me to a transcendent bife de lomo at a side-street steakhouse called Parrilla Peña, I started hopping into cabs in Buenos Aires, Berlin and New York, asking drivers where to eat and documenting my discoveries on a blog called taxigourmet.com.

In New York, I met two female cab drivers who showed me the way to Jamaican curried goat and Puerto Rican mofongo – and convinced me that I could drive a yellow taxi, too, which I did, for a year, chauffeuring everyone from hysterical brides to ex-New Yorkers searching for pastrami.

No one, my colleagues taught me, knows a city better than a cabbie. And four trips to Italy had taught me that few people know food better than Italians. What would happen if I tested these two truths in Rome – a city with some of the greatest food, and some of the most notorious taxi drivers, in the world?

"Buona sera," I said to the tassista who was parked, along with six of his colleagues, next to the Esso station on Piazza Albania. He winced at my accent and started rolling a cigarette.

"I'm looking for a cheap restaurant not too far from here," I continued.

"I never eat at restaurants around here," he said.

A tassista in a brown T-shirt with an opera singer's belly stepped out of his cab. "Go to Testaccio," he said. "There are lots of restaurants there. You'll find something."

"No, no," I said. "I'm a taxi driver, too. I want to go somewhere you would eat."

"Somewhere I would eat?" the cigarette-rolling cabbie said. He looked at the chubby tassista. They started laughing.

"Hey!" said the chubby tassista. "What about Remo?"

"Si!" said the cigarette-rolling cabbie. "Remo! They have good pizza."

"Can you take me there?" I said.

"You don't need us to take you!" said the cigarette-rolling cabbie. "Turn right at the signal, then left, then right. It's on Piazza di Santa Maria Liberatrice. There's a pharmacy across the street."

I'd already started to question the stereotypes about Roman cabbies on the walk to Pizzeria Remo and one glance at the Italian families celebrating on Tuesday night at the restaurant's pavement tables and one bite of pizza bianca con fiori di zucca – with olive oil, mozzarella, courgette flowers and a sprinkling of anchovies – moved me to outright optimism. True to Roman tradition, the toppings were spare but fresh, and the crust, thinner than the plate, charred on the edges, chewy but soft, was the masterwork of a trio of bandana-wearing pizzaioli who manned the wood-burning oven next to the entrance of the restaurant. The tassisti could easily have driven me in circles before dropping me off here, I thought, but they didn't.

Were the tassisti at Piazza Albania the exception rather than the rule? The next day I walked to the taxi stand at Piazza Bologna, 4km north-east of the city centre, to find out. Rossella Falasca was driving the cab at the front of the queue. "You won't find Roman food in this neighbourhood," said Falasca, who has been driving for nine years and is one of approximately 1,200 female cabbies in Rome. "You have to go to Testaccio or Trastevere. But that way," she pointed to Via Sambucuccio d'Alando, "is a good seafood restaurant. I went there a few days ago."

Marco Magliozzi, the owner of La Fraschetta del Pesce, was amused that a tassista had sent me to his restaurant. "Our pasta boiler is broken," said Magliozzi, who worked as a fisherman and owned three fish stores before he opened La Fraschetta this March. "But we can do some antipasti, maybe a fritto misto for you." What followed – calamari with olive oil and lemon, mussels steamed with garlic, leeks and Castelli Romani white wine, grilled sea bass, crab and shrimp – were glorious expressions of what Magliozzi calls cucina alla marinara: simple dishes designed to showcase the quality of "our seafood".

After I met Simone Bellini, my rising faith in the food knowledge of Roman cab drivers reached fever pitch. The tassista led me to fantastic versions of rigatoni alla carbonara and trippa alla Romana at La Tavernaccia da Bruno – a family-run trattoria a few blocks from where the cabbie grew up, near the train station in Trastevere. He also insisted I try La Nuova Cantinetta, an archetypal Roman trattoria in Garbatella where he eats rigatoni alla pajata (with tomato sauce, milk-fed calf intestines and pecorino Romano) every week.

Reality hit after I took the underground to Cinecittà, the film studio where Federico Fellini made La Dolce Vita. There, on the outskirts of Rome, I hoped to find a tassista who could show me a restaurant that wasn't in a guidebook. Instead I met a cabbie who told me about a "terrible" taxi driver in Bangkok who cheated him, as he took the long way to the centro storico before delivering me to a restaurant where he tried to negotiate a kickback from the hostess in exchange for bringing me there.

Cinzia Perroni, a professional soprano who has been moonlighting as a tassista for five years, tried to explain the behaviour of her unscrupulous colleagues. "Before, some Roman cab drivers were dishonest because they were stupid," she said. "Now it's out of necessity. There are too many taxis and not enough passengers. But there's something really weird and really fun about this job. And I love to eat!" She wrote down the addresses of seven of her favourite restaurants, including Il Tunnel, where she's been eating risotto alla crema di scampi since she was a girl. "It's the best in Rome," she told me.

I didn't actively seek out female cab drivers in Rome – but they seemed to have the most interesting stories and the best food recommendations. Tassista Laura Piccolo, who studied mathematics before she started the job 12 years ago, was, I thought, a case in point. But as we searched for a trattoria she wanted to show me, she circled the same block three times – and left the meter running. When she found the place, it was closed. Was the cabbie trying to cheat me?

In the end we stopped at Perilli, Piccolo's favourite place for rigatoni alla carbonara. It said €18 on the meter, but she wouldn't take more than 12. "I got lost, honey. You don't have to pay for that!" She handed me her card: "Call me later and tell me if you liked the carbonara."

Layne Mosler is the author of the Taxi Gourmet blog (taxigourmet.com)

Six of the best cabbie-recommended restaurants in Rome

Pizzeria Remo
A 75-year-old pizzeria considered among the best in Rome, where locals get loud and every pizza is baked to order. Pizza bianca con fiori di zucca (€7.50) is especially good.
• Piazza di Santa Maria Liberatrice, 44, Testaccio (0039 6 574 6270), dinner only. Closed Sun

La Fraschetta del Pesce
A new restaurant where ex-fisherman Marco Magliozzi applies a light touch to the seafood his son delivers daily from their home port of Anzio. The Wednesday €13 crudo and pasta special is great value, but the €20, €30 or €40 menus give a taste of his way with fish.
• Via E d'Arborea, 40-42, Nomentano (0039 6 4424 4818; lafraschettadelpesce.it), lunch and dinner. Closed Mon

La Tavernaccia da Bruno
Sisters Paula and Patrizia Persiani took over this trattoria from their parents in 1991. Chef Giuseppe Ruzzeto (Patrizia's husband) frequently leaves the kitchen to take compliments on his rigatoni alla carbonara (€9) and trippa alla romana (tripe in a delicate tomato sauce, €12).
• Via Panfilo Castaldi, 12, Trastevere (0039 6 581 2792; latavernacciaroma.com), lunch and dinner. Closed Wed

La Nuova Cantinetta
A definitive Roman trattoria nestled between two apartment buildings in the Rococo-inspired Garbatella quarter. Owner Paolo Sanna keeps prices low and tassisti coming back for classics such as rigatoni alla pajata (€6).
• Via Basilio Brollo, 7, Garbatella (0039 6 513 5809), lunch and dinner. Closed Sun

Il Tunnel
Seafood dishes here – such as tassista Cinzia Perroni's favourite risotto alla crema di scampi (€7) – are solid and reasonably priced, but it is their affogato (home-made custard ice cream drizzled with espresso, €6) that merits a cross-town cab ride.
• Via Arezzo, 11, Nomentano (0039 6 4423 6808), lunch and dinner. Closed Mon

Perilli
A favourite of former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni and taxi driver Laura Piccolo, where rigatoni alla carbonara (€13) and abbacchio (Roman spring lamb, €14) are a bit pricey but pitch-perfect.
• Via Marmorata, 39, Testaccio (0039 6 574 2415), lunch and dinner. Closed Wed