We would never admit this to, say, our child, but we might not visit too many museums while in Rome and the hillside villages of Tuscany…
Because when we came across a website like Katie Parla’s, with her foodie take on Rome, all you want to do is make your way through her list of recommendations and sample the alla’gricia and the margherita (see above) and the suppli’ and the cured meats and the lush, almost spongy mozzarella made right-before-your-very eyes. After all that, we predict a very slow meander around the Centro Storico, maybe a walk across the Tiber to Brooke’s old neighborhood, Trastevere. We’ll be very happy… and slightly dazed.
Brooke flies over today, Jamie joins in a few and then we hop the high-speed to Florence before we make our way to a friend’s villa on the grounds of Castello di Casole.
But let’s start from the beginning- our ‘Can’t Miss List’ for Rome!
Foodie Rome: Can’t Miss List
Salumeria Roscioli– We land in Paris, we head to Le Comptoir du Relais. We land in Rome and we head to Roscioli. The Roscioli brothers are like a Mario Batali/Joseph Bastianich/Danny Meyer/Daniel hybrid- but in a rustic way. They cure, they ferment- they boast the oldest operating bread bakery in Rome- and they have 1,000’s of hard-to-find wines in their cellar. Hundreds are by the glass. Oh, and did I mention they have a menu dedicated to mozzarella??
Il Goccetto– A wine bar cult favorite with Romans and non-Romans alike (Yes, the rest of the world only wishes they could call the Cita’ Eterna their home turf… ahemmm, yes, we include ourselves in that group). On the way to Campo dei Fiori, we’ll stop for a glass of Barbaresco and a handful of taralli.
Trattoria Monti– We’re going to let Frank Bruni describe this one:
“I could never go back to Rome and not drop into Monti (Via San Vito 13/A; 06-446-6573), which represents what I like best about Roman dining, the deliciousness you find at places that aren’t at all stuffy or overly expensive but that provide ample coddling and take serious pride in what they do…I had a pasta dish at Monti that I’d had before, noodles called mezze maniche, or half-sleeves, with crumbled sausage and pecorino cheese. Not a complicated dish. But the amounts of crumbled sausage and of cheese were calibrated so that the dish had precisely the meaty richness it wanted and not an iota more, precisely the roundness and sharpness it wanted and not an iota less.”
In a different piece, he calls Monti his “home in Rome”- enough said!
We promise to report back from the foodie trenches… Once again, a special thanks to Katie Parla for the above photo and all of the fabulous recs!
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