We arrived in Rome without a guidebook, but with a list as long as your arm of recommendations from friends who have explored Rome enough to find the hidden treasures every food-and-culture obsessed traveler seeks. Go to La Lucia and eat the coniglio caccitora (thank you Stephanie). Stay in a monastery, they're cheap, clean, and oh the nuns! (thank you Evan). Pizzarium, west of the Vatican, has the best pizza in the world (thank you Max's mom). The problem with our tome of juicy insider knowledge was that we tried to do everything on each person's list,eat every dish at each food establishment, and all under the brutal Roman sun when any sensible being with any say in the matter must have been curled up in a siesta from 11 AM to 5 PM. What I mean to say is that we over-Romed. And now, from a hillside just outside of Rome, I have a moment to share with you. It is from Stephanie's carefully crafted list of delights, and it involved inhumane amounts of hearty Roman peasant food.
The Romana who served us did not beat about the bush. Smoker's voice and teeth to match, stringy hair and sparkling eyes, she smacked both palms on our plastic sidewalk table--had their been a sidewalk--and leaned forward, offering us our only choice of the evening: "Bianco o rosso?!" I am not being coy in withholding the name of the restaurant; we just couldn't find any marker that announced it. It is pressed into the side of a hill in Trastevere, at the foot of the Janiculum stairs, at the end of Vicolo del Cedro. That is enough if you ever want to find it.
We chose rosso, and soon the table wine and pitcher of good Roman tap water plunked down onto the green-and-white plastic table cloth. Almost immediately the first wave of food was upon us--bruschetta with thick chunks of tomatoes, languid, savory beans dissolving into their savory sauce, spicy mashed potatoes that were a startling fiery orange. We were still smiling when the pasta bowl arrived--simple parmigiano and pepper. But when the next two bowls of pasta arrived, panic nestled into my stomach somewhere between the bread and the pasta and the potatoes. The only solution was more rosso.
Pasta Anguish
More Rosso
When the segundi presented themselves, one squid one chicken, we were practically lashing ourselves in penitence. We could not eat it all. The squid was nothing to write home about (ahaha), but the chicken tasted so much like chicken it was almost indecent. With the arrival of dessert came the arrival of even more diners. More tables drawn onto the street, more family, friends, regulars. It felt very much like we were crashing a neighborhood party. With the anise biscuits, limoncello, and grappa, and months of catching up to do, Kate and I barely made it back to the convent by curfew.
Limoncello. Grappa. Anise Biscuits.
Meh. SquidI could go on like this. I could describe every topping on the finest pizza I've ever had (so far). I could tell you about watching the fruit crates roll into the gelateria and the gelato and sorbetto roll out (fragoline di bosco! how you torture me!), but it is already feeling a bit too nostalgic. We have moved on, relocated to a 'farm' outside the city, which is really the vegetable patch of an old gentleman called Claudio who was the director of a local TV channel until Berlusconi bought it up. He is 72 and works in the garden with his pacemaker despite the protestations of his fluttery American wife. We work alongside Filip and Anna, the sweetest Swedish couple you can ever imagine. We call Claudio 'Cloudy,' which with his shock of white hair and limited range of hearing, is the perfectest term of endearment. It is hot. The meals are long, and the siesta is longer. Life is good.
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