Roman holiday: La parte due

A pizzeria sighting and great Roman graffiti!

Please welcome guest bloggers Peanut Butter and Jelly, foodie friends recently back from a vacation in Rome. In the second half of their guest post, Peanut Butter shares some of their experiences eating out and reviews their three favourite restaurants. —Asha

Both lunch and dinner are served on the later side, which suits us well. Some restaurants don't open for lunch until 12:30 or 1 p.m.

A full meal at a restaurant consists of a small appetizer, a primi (usually a medium-sized portion of pasta) and a secondi (usually a meat dish with a few veggies).

We did not consider the service slow as much as leisurely. Generally speaking, the food was very good or excellent, sometimes regardless of price point. We did encounter a few misses but not too many.

Mind you, we followed a few important rules when eating out:

* We followed our noses and smelled the restaurant once inside.

* We avoided restaurants where there was someone outside who was aggressively waving for us to come in or yelling after us in English. This was actually a tip from Eyewitness' Top 10 Rome guidebook that stated “no self respecting Roman would go to such a restaurant and neither should you.”

* We avoided restaurants on main streets near major tourist attractions (which is somewhat difficult as Rome is teeming with these). Some of the best places to eat are on side streets and not much to look at.

* We tried to order what the restaurant is best at. For example, if we were at a pizzeria, we ordered pizza.

* We steered clear of “tourist menus.”

Of the many restaurants that we tried over our 12 days in Rome, here are our favourite three:

Il Bocconcino
Via Ostilia, 23, phone 06 77079175
www.ilbocconcino.com


The luscious menu at Il Bocconcino.

This is the restaurant that we were the most impressed with and we were lucky enough to visit twice. It has a rustic, welcoming feel and the staff were patient when explaining in detail all the items on the Italian menu. We started with the antipasto plate, which was plentiful and had a decadent array of cheeses, meats as well some interesting baked goods. The rigatoni carbonara was the best carbonara we had on vacation (this is a common Roman pasta dish consisting of pasta, bacon, parmesan cheese and egg). The rabbit medallions in red wine sauce were tender and juicy and so good that we came back and ordered this item for a second time. We also enjoyed the artichoke torte; while not the strongest item on the menu, it was good nevertheless. We skipped our usually daily gelato and went for dessert. We split a chocolate cake that was similar to a soft, chewy brownie. Molto buono!

Maccheroni
Piazza Delle Coppelle 44, phone 39.06.683.078.95
reservations@ristorantemaccheroni.com

This was a restaurant that Jelly had researched ahead of time and wanted to try. After we made our reservation we discovered that it was in a few tourist handbooks, which explained the number of tourists we saw there. But in fact, we benefited from their presence — during dinner we met some interesting American tourists who were nice enough to give us their tickets for that night's midnight mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

But I digress, the food...

We shared artichoke cooked in white wine and garlic, unexpectedly good. We cut into it easily, and it was a nice starter. For our primi, we tried a gorgonzola and pear gnocchi and a red-lettuce risotto that was subtle in taste and quite a refreshing change from the heavier flavours usually found in risotto. Although a good pairing of ingredients, the gnocchi itself was not as good as we tasted at Casa Coppelle (the next review below). Our two secondis this night were osso bucco and carpaccio. The osso bucco was good, but the carpaccio was excellent. It consisted of paper-thin slices of uncooked tender beef, covered in arugula and parmesan cheese, and served with olive and balsamic. The meat almost dissolved in your mouth and we enjoyed every last bite.

Casa Coppelle
Piazza Delle Coppelle 49, phone 39.06.6889.1707
ristorante@casacoppelle.it

The atmosphere and friendly staff also set this restaurant apart. The highlight was the gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce. This was by far the best gnocchi I had ever tasted. It was clearly made from scratch on the premises. The gnocchi did not have a sticky or heavy consistency but was rather light and tender. We also both tried the veal escalopes with lemon sauce that we a bit salty but still enjoyed it.


Nuns caught out in the rain during midnight mass in Vatican City.

Roman holiday!

Peanut Butter eating gelato at the Trevi fountain in Rome, Italy.

Please welcome guest bloggers Peanut Butter and Jelly, foodie friends of mine recently back from a Christmas adventure in Rome. In part one of their guest blog, Peanut Butter shares their general Roman food observations. —Asha

For those considering a trip to Rome, it is well worth it if you have any interest in art, architecture, history and of course food! Allow yourself lots of time as there is far too much to see and so many restaurants to try in only a few days.

We noticed that most restaurants served similar dishes. Antipasto was available everywhere, from the least expensive of bars to the most high-end of restaurants. In many respects, the variety of food in Rome is very limited relative to similar-sized cities in North America, but that does not mean it's not worth visiting as many restaurants as possible. The Romans focus on serving their classic dishes in their best possible form and way with the freshest ingredients around.


A chocolate nativity scene in a Roman shop window.

Breakfast

For breakfast, most Romans favour taking an espresso or cappuccino along with a sweet pastry at the bar in the local cafe. This morning tradition became a ritual that Jelly really got into. We found it interesting that even the pastries and bread were sold by weight.

Cooking at the apartment

Most days, we ate a large lunch out, and stuck to making simple meals for dinner at the apartment with fresh ingredients that we picked up at the local grocery store. The clementines, tomatoes and artichokes tasted particularly fresh to us, having just come from Ottawa's cold winter. We bought different varieties of salami and prosciutto to compliment the different cheeses that we found. We observed the locals getting into heated discussions over cheeses at the cheese counter. One of our favourites was a sheep's cheese called piccolino. It spreads on bread similar to butter and is delicious.

Gelato

Gelato was a great ice cream treat that we enjoyed almost every day (see photo of me at the top!). It did not look to us like the Romans ate as much gelato in the winter as the tourists, who still regularly enjoyed it. A favourite of Jelly's was pine nut, a flavour we found in Florence.


Two Swiss guards in Vatican City.

A Roman feast

Visit beFOODled on Flickr.

My friends Peanut Butter and Jelly went to Rome for two weeks over Christmas. They had many delicious food adventures and came back with mouthwatering stories.

They kindly invited me for dinner on New Year's Eve and this is what they cooked for me, above. An insalata caprese to start, followed by spaghetti carbonara and tartuffo for dessert. The other two photos are from their trip to Rome and show the Septimus Arch forum and a never-ending row of scooters! (Crossing the street as a pedestrian in Rome is a leap of faith, they say, you just got to take a deep breath and go for it!)

PB and J have also generously offered to write a guest post on beFOODled about their adventures. Stay tuned because the next two posts on beFOODled will be all about their Roman holiday!

Read part one: General Roman food observations
Read part two: Roman restaurant reviews

Fondue dinner chez PB and J

Visit beFOODled on Flickr.

Peanut Butter and Jelly had us over for a delicious dinner the other night. They made a cheese fondue using one of PB's family heirlooms, an ancient fondue maker from Switzerland (below), bought in the 1970s. Isn't it stylish? Four decades later it still works a treat.

They also served a heavenly salad that looked as good as it tasted (above) and easy-peasy to make. It's a border of mandarin segments around a spring mix salad with irresistible roasted pecans and sugar snap peas, all sprinkled over with pomegranate seeds. PB and J served it in a rectangular plate that accentuated the lovely presentation. We ate it with a sweet vinaigrette and I loved it!


Visit beFOODled on Flickr.