Food and Culture in Roma, as defined by me

This picture is a visual representation of my experience with food and culture in Rome. I have been fortunate enough to meet Italians my age and I now consider them my friends. I have been all over Rome with them and I feel that I have truly been able to experience something that I could not have found on my own. We have spent a lot of time eating and drinking and I have realized that the meals of the Italians are not defined by the food they eat, but by the people they are eating it with. It is not so important the individual dishes and the cost and the location of the restaurant, as long as we are all together. They plan long elaborate meals, but to me it seems as if they do not pay so much attention to the food. The entire meal is filled with constant conversation and laughter as we "cin cin" every five minutes and enjoy each others company.

In this picture we are eating Chinese food. You may ask why I uploaded a picture from a Chinese restaurant. I want to impress upon you that the Italians are more concerned with who they are eating their food with, rather than the actual food itself. In this picture everyone is laughing and having a good time, which is how every single meal that I have had with the Italians has been.

This style of socializing is very refreshing for me. In America, when I go out with my friends, we spend a long time in silence, choosing food from the menu. When we finally receive our food (and I say finally because someone always complains about how long it takes) we scarf it down, pay our separate checks, and leave the restaurant. We often do not take the time to slow down and really enjoy each other because our meal is focused on our food rather than each other.

The Italians are very proud of their cuisine and think that it is the best in the world. It may be, but even more important than their food is the quality time they spend with their friends and family gathered around the food. And that is why I think Italian cuisine is the best.

Eating myself into oblivion

This past week Skip, my father, came to visit me in Rome. We spent our time eating, discussing where to eat, and digesting our food so that we could quickly eat again!
Ok, maybe not seriously, but we ate A LOT and it was damnnnnnnnnnnnn good!

I will take you through my wonderful week of gluttony meal by meal.
Wednesday April 21
Dinner @ Dar Pallaro
My dad's pilot friend had recommended this restaurant to him for the next time he was in Rome, and my dad's friend passed it on to us. We were told it was a fixed menu and for 25 euro per person you get a nice, filling meal. We were not sure where to eat that night, so we decided to go check it out. As we came upon the restaurant my father and I stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other. We had been here 3 years earlier with our Rick Steves "The Best of Italy" Tour. Only last time we were there, we were told that the name of the restaurant was "Mama's." Either way, we walked in, sat down, and were soon greeted by "Mama."


Right away food started flying at us. They brought out cold cuts and cheese and olives and bread and fried balls of something and lentils and some type of vegetable that tastes like licorice. I ate it all because I thought that was it. Silly Claire, this is Rome, there is ALWAYS more food! For the second course they brought out carbonara and a rigatoni with a red sauce. Ok, this must be it, so I ate it all. Wrong again. After that they brought out more beans and meat and potatoes and another vegetable. It was so good, but I was SOOO full. Then came dessert. I felt bad that I wasn't eating all of MAMA's food, but I DID NOT pace myself.
From what I have experienced, this was a pretty authentic Roman meal. A few weeks ago, my Italian friends, who have been living in Rome their whole lives, brought me to Arricia for dinner. Over there the waitresses just kept brining out plate after plate. It began with cold cuts and cheeses and beans and bread, then progressed to pasta, then meat, and ended with a nice tirimisu. Oh, did I mention that there was a never ending supply of wine? I love Rome.


Anyways, Skip and I had a lovely first meal at Dar Pallero - go here if you want to eat like a Roman.

Thursday August 22
For lunch, I introduced Skip to the miracle that is FORNO in Campo di Fiori. This is the best pizza I have ever had. They get the sauce to crust ratio PERFECT everytime!

For dinner, we went to GLASS! I had been waiting for this moment for so long and it had finally arrived. My started with a pistacio encrusted scallop with white chocolate sauce, it was heavenly. Then, by compliments of the chef, we received a sort of pureed corn soup with hot sauce in it, delicious as well! For our main course I ordered a coffee pasta. I cant remember what else was on it, but it was a great mixture of flavors. My father got the saffron risotto and it was WAYYY better than what we made in class. It had a date sauce in it that really made it pop. For desert we got a cake thing with passion fruit, so so so good.


Besides the amazing flavors, I liked the portion size of this restaurant. I walked out of their feeling good. The night before, at Dar Pellaro, I was overly stuffed from the amount of food placed in front of me. Grazie, Glass!

Friday August 23
This day, Skip and I did some sightseeing around Rome. For lunch we stopped in the Jewish Ghetto and had some vegetables. I had zucchini cooked in a Jewish way and artichokes baked with cheese, tomatoes, and parmesan. Both very very good.
For dinner, we went back to a Rick Steves restaurant near the Vatican. It was very good, and very cheap! We had pasta cooked in an orange cream sauce. I do not think that this is typical Italian food, but it was still very good!
For dessert, OLD BRIDGE! Now I have been told my many Italians that real gelato is chocolate or nutella, or flavors like that. However, I enjoy the fruit flavors much much more. At Old Bridge there is amazing blood orange gelato! Highly Highly recommended!

Saturday August 24
This was the day we went to the Catacombs. For lunch we just had some snacks at my apt and then we went to Trastevere for drinks before dinner. In the main Piazza there is an "orange Bar." They serve amazing blood orange juice. I got juice, sans alcool, and my father got it with Compari, of course. I think that the juice is so so good that alcohol ruins it. Anyway.... GO HERE, so good!


For dinner we went to Dal Checchino! Skip was a little nervous for this restaurant, but he ended up loving it. We both ordered the Straciatella Soup which was amazing. It got better with each sip. I think this was because the lemon flavors were more concentrated near the bottom of the bowl. The soup is a sort of Roman egg-drop soup with cheese, parsley, and lemon. I will definitely be trying this again before I leave Rome.


For dinner I had Pasta with tomato sauce and Ox Tail. It was very delicious, but the oxtail was chopped up so finely that I could not get a good taste of it.


My dad ordered one of their specialty dishes and received a commemorative plate that is from the Unione that they are part of. He like his meal a lot. It was a braised beef stuffed with carrots, celery, and prosciutto.


For dessert we got a pear cake, YUM!


Sunday, April 25
This day we hung out in Rome and lived la dolce vita.
For lunch we went to Piazza Navona and sat down and had a nice loonnnggggg meal!
I ate the house pasta, Tres Scalini! It was penne pasta in a shrimp and mushroom cream sauce, it was mucho delicioso!


For dinner I decided to cook for my father. I made him my favorite mushroom recipe and pasta carbonara. They were, of course, both divine.

Monday April 26
Today, my father and I got more FORNO bc it is SO FREAKING GOOD
For dinner my dad took me and two other girls to the restaurant in Campo that Federico took us to.
I had something that I have been looking alllll over Italy for. I ordered a pumpkin-cheese mousse pasta dish. I was not sure what to expect, but I have been looking for pumpkin or butternut squash ravioli or something like that everywhere!
When I received the dish, the waitress called it a crepe. It was square with filo dough on the bottom, a sort of noodle on top with melted cheese. Inside was a pumpkin moose filling that was amazing!


Finally, my taste buds had been satiated! I will definitely be going back to this restaurant to eat this dish before I leave Rome!

Tuesday April 27 - Skips Last Night In Town
For lunch we ate at a shitty, over priced restaurant near the pantheon. Just don't.
For dinner my father wanted to go to Dar Poeta in Trastevere. This is a small pizza place that is very very reasonably priced. The pizza is delicious and the crust is unique. It is soft and thin, very very good.
For dessert we went to Giolitti, which is supposedly one of the best gelato places in Rome. I got Kiwi gelato, it was great, but the men who worked there were ASSHOLES! Seriously, I had an unpleasant experience bc I walked away in a bad mood, I resented the fact that the gelato was good because I wanted it to be bad since the servers were so rude to my father and I. I guess thats how the tourist places work, they don't work on customer service bc they get a whole group of brand new tourists each and every day.

Ahhhh ROMA! THank you for increasing my waistline over the past 4 months!

Filming

So we FINALLY finished filming! It was a great experience being able to work with the camera's and decide what to put in the documentary. It was pretty difficult at first; and I didn't even handle anything technical!

Cason and I wrote the script, and I felt pretty good about it! I thought that we collaborated well and put together a nice piece of work! During our research we found that Dal Checchino is part of a unione of restaurants in Italy that work to preserve regional traditions and dishes.

Last night my father and I went to Dal Checchino for dinner; it was very very good! We started off with the Stracciatela soup, which was delicious. It had eggs, cheese, parsley, and lemon in it. For my main course, I got the ox tail cooked in a tomato sauce with pasta, once again, delicious! My father got braised beef stuffed with carrots, celery, and proscuitto, which was also delicious. For ordering this dish, he received a commemorative plate for the meal. This plate is from the unione of restaurants that Checchino belongs to. Every restaurant has a painted dish for their specialty that they give away to customers.

I would like to go to at least one more restaurant that is part of this unione before I leave Rome. Filming the documentary was very interesting, and I got to learn about this very important union!

Where the Buffalo's roam

So I just returned back to come after a weekend in Cilento. It was a very fun weekend and I ate a lot of very delicious food. On Friday we left Trastevere around 9.30. We arrived in Cilento around 1 and had lunch. For lunch we ate fried seafood and pasta with tomatoes. It was very good. After lunch we went to a kiwi farm. The farm was beautiful. I also learned that fruit grows on trees.
After our enlightening visit to the kiwi farm, we went to the sea to see some seafood. Once again, do they think we are 5? We stood there while the fishermen showed us their catches for the day; squid, shrimp, and some fish.
The next day we went to some “museums.” We began the day at a buffalo farm. It was pretty neat. We watched men make mozerella di buffalo. Then… guess what we had for lunch? Tomato pasta, again! It was ok, but the antipasta was where it was at! We got eggplant parmesan, fried artichoke, fried zucchini blossoms, and mozeralla cheese!
We drove around some more and then ate… again! For dinner we went to a pizza factory place. We tried 4 pizzas which were all delicious. Apparently, this place sets the standard for Italian pizza. Unfortunately, they did not describe what qualifies an “Italian pizza.” From my understanding, it is very thin. And…. That is all I am able to gather. Either way, the pizza was very good.

The Leaning Tower of Cheeza

A few weeks ago we went outside of Rome to a place in the countryside where they make cheese. The cheese maker adds an enzyme to the cheese in order to make it. This enzyme comes from lamb organs. In order to make the ricotta they cook it twice.
People from the state come to check the cheese for quality. If it passes, they brand it and then it can be sold. This is to protect the cheese maker’s authenticity and quality of the cheese. The cheese can be labeled as a specific type and it makes it very difficult for others to copy it. Therefore, the cheese is protected in its region.
In big industries, the producers often do not know where the milk comes from. This causes every cheese to become very similar because the individual cheeses lose their unique characteristics. It is different in this small cheese farm in Italy because they have more control over their inputs. For example, the cheese is made with raw milk because it does not need to be pasteurized. Consequently the cheese always comes out good and unique because the animals eat different things.
This day was a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing the animals and experiencing the cheese production process. Unfortunately, I did not like the cheese. It was too salty and I did not enjoy the texture of it in my mouth.

Beef Stew and Wienerschitzel

I spent this past weekend in Hungary and Austria and I had some goooooood eats!
Thursday night we went to a restaurant on Raday street in downtown Budapest which is famous its restaurants that line the street. I had Dijon Duck breast with potatoes. It was so good and nice to have something really out of the ordinary. The dijon was sweet and spicy; not a flavor that is easily found in Italy.

The next day we headed to MICKY D's for breakfast. We noticed that they had hashbrowns and sausage biscuits, so we had to! Ahhhh America, all up in my mouth!
I have never eaten so much McDonalds in my life as I have in these past 3 months. Well, not seriously, but I have eaten it quite a few times. I think it is because anytime I get homesick or nostalgic, I want to go there and get a cheeseburger because it reminds me of home.

On Friday we did not eat anything special because we were in a big rush with sightseeing and spelunking and going out.

On Saturday, after a long relaxing day at the Thermal Baths and a massage, we went to a small hummus place near the Oktogon stop. I got hummus with mushrooms and sesame sauce. It was so so good. I miss hummus a lot! This was the best hummus plate I have ever had; actually, it is the only hummus plate I have ever had, but it was delicious. The mushrooms were warm and the hummus was cold. The sesame sauce was just sweet enough to offset the hummus. Hummus is Yummus! Ahh, I miss you, Trader Joes!

On Sunday we headed to Vienna for a day trip (just a 3 hour train ride from Budapest). When we arrived we went to a small cafe for Breakfast. I got a farmers omelet with bacon, cheese, leeks, and potatoes. It was very very good. I have not had an omelet since America. It was nice having a real breakfast for once! The cafe was called Klines Cafe and I highly recommend checking it out!

For dinner we went to Figlmueller for the best Wienerschintzel in Vienna! It came with a potato and field greens salad. This was very good and reminded me a bit of German Potato Salad. It was sweet and vinergary and had a hint of balsamic vinegar in it as well. The wienerschintzel came served on a small plate to emphasize how large it was. It was huge! It was beaten down very very thinly and breaded and cooked in vegetable oil. It was not greasy at all! It came served with Lemon, which I squeezed all over the veal. What a perfect dinner! If you are ever in Vienna, do not miss out on Figlmuuller. It is moderately priced and has a very very nice atmosphere! Be sure to go in early to make a reservation!

Ciao!