Rome is a great city to eat in if you stick to
traditional food at traditional restaurants. The
city is currently undergoing a love affair with
sushi and innovative cooking, usually referred
to as “cucina creativa,” creative
cuisine. For Italians, this food may be different,
interesting, even delicious. For Americans, it
is none of those. We do creative food better.
Certainly, we have better Japanese food. Indeed,
what my American friends who live in Rome crave
most is Asian cooking of all kinds.
Although other Italians may tell you that
there is no such thing as local Roman food,
they are wrong. There are many dishes that Romans
rightly consider their own and that are served
in the restaurants. Indeed, now that Italian
women are as liberated as American women and
working long hours at responsible jobs, they
are cooking less. As a result, the restaurants
are serving dishes that used to be more or less
reserved for home. That’s all the better
for us tourists.
Among the foods you should try to sample,
when in season (Italian food everywhere is highly
seasonal), are the Roman artichokes, cooked
alla Romana, which is to say braised with garlic
and mint, or alla Giudia, or Jewish-style, which
is spread out and fried in olive oil so they
end up looking like flowers. Among other vegetable
dishes, don’t miss the Roman cauliflower,
which is chartreuse in color and with a taste
between our green broccoli and white cauliflower.
In the spring, make sure to eat wild asparagus.
They won’t be served as a vegetable –
at least, I have never encountered them offered
for their own sake – but they may be in
a bowl of pasta, or in some other guise. Spring
also brings fava beans and peas, puntarelle,
a chicory-related salad green most often tossed
with a dressing that includes anchovies, as
well as Rome’s famous abbacchio, white-fleshed
suckling lamb.
In the winter, don’t pass up broccoletti,
a type of broccoli di rape. In summer, you’ll
find all the vegetables you associate with Italian
cooking: tomatoes, of course, eggplant, zucchini,
sweet peppers in red and gold. One Roman specialty
is tomatoes stuffed with rice and baked. You
will see them everywhere.
The most famous cheese of Rome is percorino
Romano, the sheep’s milk grating cheese,
and it plays a part in many of the nearly infinite
number of pasta dishes you will encounter. The
two most famous local pastas are spaghetti alla
carbonara and spaghetti or bucatini all’Amatriciana.
Carbonara is these days often not spaghetti
at all but penne or rigatoni with a “sauce”
that is really a coating of eggs, pecorino,
and diced guanciale, the fatty cheek meat of
a pig, or pancetta (bacon). Amatriciana is pasta
with a guanciale or pancetta-based tomato sauce
(with or without onions or garlic) and a hit
of hot pepper.
Arrabbiata is nearly the same as Amatriciana
but with more hot pepper and often no pancetta
or guanciale. Pasta alla gricia is a sort of
white Amatriciana – just pasta, usually
spaghetti, with guanciale and pecorino (sometimes
onion or garlic). Cacio e pepe is pasta with
nothing more than grated pecorino and lots of
black pepper with either olive oil or pork fat
as the lubricant.
Ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta,
sauced with melted butter and sage, is a favorite
stuffed pasta. I for one can never eat enough
of them.
The most famous Roman dessert is tartufo,
which is a ball of chocolate ice cream coated
with chunks of bitter chocolate. You won’t
find tartufi in the restaurants, only in caffès
and gelaterias. If you want to indulge I urge
you to stop at the caffè where it was
invented, Tre Scalini, in the Piazza Navona.
It’s expensive, but worth the rent for
the table – meaning the price of your
dessert -- to watch the goings on in the busy
piazza. It’s a perfect perch for one of
the best shows in town.
For a snack, try a tramezzino, a triangular
sandwich on crustless white bread. They are
sold everywhere (my favorite spot for them in
the historic center of the city, near the Campo
de’ Fiori, is listed below), or supplì
al telefono, an elongated fried rice ball. (In
Naples and other points south, these are called
arancini.)
Roman pizza is thin-crusted and, to me, an
adopted Neapolitan, not nearly as satisfying
as Neapolitan pizza, but I’ve never been
known to pass up pizza of any kind. Roman pizza
bianca, essentially flat bread dressed with
oil and salt and sometimes rosemary, is a great
snack. There are a few excellent places to buy
it in around or near the Campo de’ Fiori
(see below).
Keep in mind that each establishment has a
weekly closing day and that some close for the
entire month of August. Also, credit cards are
rarely accepted at bars and less expensive places
-- so call if in doubt.
