Per usual, we found a food tour in Rome and we are sure glad we did. Our tour took place in Trastevere, which felt much more authentic (i.e., no hordes of adoring tourists like at the Spanish Steps). The food was also markedly better than anything we had in the more touristy area of the Centro Storico. My eating goal in Rome was quite simple: eat gelato at least once per day. Our last day, we had delicious tiramisu from Pompi (Sev was not as much a fan), had pizza at dinner, and then gelato for dessert. Because that’s the way we roll.
Our first bite on the food tour was a mignon, which is basically choux pastry with a nice light filling. It wasn’t too sweet apart from the light glaze and just delicious. I could have eaten about six more.
Our next stop was at a traditional meat and cheese place. The Italians know how to live and eat, I would do just about anything for one of these in the neighborhood. This is guanciale, which I had never heard of but is a key ingredient in a traditional Roman pasta dish. It is cured pork jowl, and spoiler alert– IT’S DELICIOUS.
Cheese, cheese, and more cheese:
One of the neat things about this shop (which is apparently common in Italy) is that you could go in and buy bread by weight. There were loaves sitting in the display case that had been cut from, so if you only wanted enough fresh bread for a single serving there was no need to buy a whole loaf and throw the rest away.
The tastes at the shop were the best prosciutto di Parma I’ve ever had– it was buttery and delicious– and pecorino romano cheese.
And then there was suppli, which is risotto rice stuffed with tomato sauce and mozzarella and deep-fried. These should probably be illegal everywhere, because they are too easy to eat and definitely not healthy:
Unfortunately we did not sample the Jewish-style artichokes– I looked for them at every restaurant we went to after the food tour, but none of the restaurants we visited had them, only the Roman artichokes which are a slightly different preparation and nowhere near as gorgeous.
There was a major pre-Easter crush at the next establishment, so we lingered outside before tasting our next sample. I love this picture because if you look closely you can see me taking the picture in the reflection!
Our next taste goes into the category of “I never would have ordered it because I never would have known to ask for it.” And that’s what I love about these food tours– they not only take you off the beaten track a bit, but push you taste things you wouldn’t recognize and/or wouldn’t think to order. This is fatty, juicy, warm porcetta on pizza bianca (i.e., plain pizza crust). Fat dripped down my chin. It was slightly salty. The bread was a little crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Perfection.
Next we stopped at a farmers’ market which really puts Cyprus’ local produce to shame. It was artichoke season and there were mountains of them. The best part was, you could order your artichokes and then keep shopping while the woman in charge of the food stall would prepare your artichokes for you. She had a little workstation set up with a set of sharp knives. Once she carved it down to the heart, she rubbed it with a lemon half all over to stop discoloration, plopped them in a plastic bag, and you were good to go.
Alongside the market was a row of vendors, including this guy selling fancy pasta, honey, and cheeses (I should add that all of the food we have consumed up to this point falls within a one block radius of our starting point– we couldn’t even argue we were walking our food off…)
Our next stop was Fatamorgana, which is a Roman gelato chain. We were assured that though it was a chain, they made high quality gelato, which you can always discern by looking at whether the gelato is piled in tall mounds (the good stuff isn’t, it is flat and a little melty), whether the colors are artificial (bright green pistachio is a classic tell for artificial flavors/coloring), and whether the fruit flavors offered are actually in season.
Severin went with a dark chocolate flavor and matcha tea– thus the bright green. I bought pistachio and an orange & almond flavor. I thought the orange-almond was a little bit of an unusual combination, a little step up from plain nut gelato (which are my favorite flavors)…WOW! This was a winning combo. I came home and searched one of my gelato cookbooks, and it turns I have a recipe for it, so I will definitely be trying my hand at making some this summer. I would also like to take this moment to recognize Severin for breaking with tradition and ordering something OTHER than lemon sorbetti, which is his go-to flavor.
After ice cream we wandered through Trastevere a little, which is a truly atmospheric and beautiful neighborhood in Rome. While the tourist center is very much big city, Trastevere feels quaint and a little country, with colorful townhouses, narrow alleys, with trees and other beautiful foliage. It’s like the difference between the nice quaint areas of Dupont Circle and downtown DC.
And then onto a trattoria for a taste of two Roman pasta classics, which were served on our plates right out of the communal skillet– the first with Amatriciana sauce, which is a tomato sauce, onion, and pecorino romano with lots of delicious oil from the guanciale which has been simmering in it. This trattoria’s version also including a surprising spicy kick at the end.
The second was Cacio e Pepe, which just means “cheese and pepper.” As you might guess, the sauce is made from pecorino romano cheese and pepper. The pasta is bucatini, which is a squarish, thick noodle which, when cooked al dente, has a nice little chew. What’s amazing is that for dinner the night before, Severin and I had just happened to order both dishes as our main course at a tourist restaurant. The difference was marked– this Amatriciana actually had visible chunks of guanciale (which you can see clearly in the picture above), whereas the tourist-y version did not. And the sauce in the cacio e pepe at the tourist place looked like it might have had more butter and oil and less pecorino romano in it.
One of two Star Wars themed graffiti/posters we saw on our walk:
The last food stop was COOKIES (the last last stop was espresso). We were there just 10-15 minutes before 2 pm, when it closed for the weekend. The shop had an amazing variety of yum-yums, it was truly a feast for the eyes! It makes me want to buy an Italian Baking book:
The shop was still warm from its large oven. My lens was not wide-angle enough to get a big picture, but this big clunky thing that says “Letra” is actually the oven the cookies go through on a conveyer belt. We didn’t get to see it in action, unfortunately.
The cookies we sampled. The ones on the left were your average butter cookie dipped in chocolate, tasty but unremarkable. The ones on the right had a lemon-y filling but I didn’t care much for the texture, which was not chewy but also not dry/crunchy. The ones in the middle are called “brutto ma buoni”– ugly but good! And indeed that is exactly what they were– light and fluffy (I suspect they are egg-white based), with a little crispy glassy texture on the outside by nice and chewy on the inside. They are hazelnut based which makes them particularly awesome in my book.
“Lacsciate ogni dieta voi ch’entrate” — “You who enter, abandon all diets!” (The real Dante actually said, “You who enter, abandon all hope!” but maybe he mention all hope for maintaining your diets.)
