Hello!
Right now I am currently in Orvieto, a small town on a tufa rock structure around an hour away from central Rome by train. I love being in a place with far fewer tourists than I have been accustomed to lately, even though I am one as well! Next week in my regular blog, I will explain all I did while I was here. For now, I want to talk about the food I have been eating in Rome. I mean, how could one not talk about food in a cultural proof while studying abroad in Italy! It would be an absolute abomination! From what my taste buds have been testing out, I can say that yes, this has to be the food capital of the world. Even though I am not too much of a picky eater, there have been some dishes that I have had to try for the first time, but ended up adoring them in the end. On the other side of the plate, dishes that I have loved for years have ended up making me see a different view on how good those dishes can actually be when a native cooks the food rather than somewhere in the United States like the always trusty Olive Garden. Man, nothing can beat those breadsticks though!
My first week in Rome, I went to a restaurant on the other side of my neighborhood in the more quiet/residential area. I was surprised to find a very nice lady who had lived there for her entire life, cooking up some amazing food in a little restaurant. She welcomed me with open arms, gave me free champagne and lemon cello, and I felt like I was honestly being welcomed into someone's home dinner. I ordered something I have never tried before in which some of you might make fun of me for and that was lasagna. Yes, I have never wanted to try it because I always felt that the dish was too cheesy for my personal taste. However, the woman who cooked there said it was her personal best, and it would be a mistake not to try it. So I took her word for it and got it. What I received was a dish with the ingredients of sweet Italian sausage, minced onion, crushed garlic, lasagna noodles (her secret style), and much much more. I have to say, I have a new favorite Italian dish. It never overkilled on the cheese, and the combination of great texture and sweet taste pushed it over the finish line for me. She also served me a creamy strawberry tiramisu which contained the owners strawberry jam, heavy whipped cream, the basic cake ingredients, and giant strawberrys on top. It was one of the creamiest and sweetest desserts so far I have had on this trip. It has also been my favorite dessert so far!
Next, I went to a restaurant called Trattoria da Enzio al 29 in the same part of the neighborhood I went for the last two dishes. This place had a line sprawling out the door and it took me about two hours to get inside. However, I was rewarded with a pasta dish that was brand new to me called amatriciana pasta. It has a traditional Italian pasta sauce with pecorini cheese, tomato, and onion. It is sometimes mixed in with a meat in which my case was sausage. Honestly, I didn't really like the sausage in the dish but the noodles and the sauce were to die for. It had a spice which I couldn't identify from the menu but the noodles were cooked to perfection in which the sauce covered with its perfect tang.
When I was in Florence, I had two different sandwiches that both were the best tasting of their kind I have ever laid my mouth on. The first one I got out of a panini shop from behind the Duomo church. I walked in and was greeted with a tasting of different cheeses and meats from the region. I got two-year-old aged cheese, local salami, and flat crunchy bread to top it off wrapped in a nice paper holder that I could walk around with. Let me tell you, the crunch on this thing created an explosion in my mouth. The fireworks of the meat and cheese created a blend of amazing tastefulness! The other sandwich I had came from a shop that Conan O'Brien went to on his show in which I will link to this page. I had a rounded breaded sandwich, with a type of string salami and robiola cheese. This tasted just as good as the other sandwich but the cheese on this one was a little nuttier which I think made the taste a little bit richer.
Here is the video of Conan visiting the same sandwich shop I went to. That part is towards the end of the video.
While I was in Venice, I tried my first pesto pasta since I have been here. I got it from a shop that made their noodles fresh from a machine that you could view from the window of the eatery. They served the noodles in the same type of container you would receive rice in at a Chinese restaurant. Honestly, pesto has always sounded gross to me. It always looked like it would taste grassy? I mean, I would always order regular red sauce based pasta over this every time. However, since I was in Italy, I needed to try new things, and so I decided to go for it. Wow, it was amazing in everyway! It almost tasted like butter noodles but you could get the tastes of basil and oregano in it that made it even better. With the combination of the freshness of the noodles and the new amazing taste, I will always remember this as a positively shocking dish on my trip.
Video above is showing the pasta shop making the noodles. I thought this was very interesting!
Video I took of the pesto pasta I had in Venice
Of course, I won't leave out pizza here! Pizza in Italy is a lot different than it is in the states. There are many different kinds and the one type that I get on the regular basis is the square-based pizza where the employee of a pizza joint cuts off a slice of an already made pizza, heats it up in the oven, and then serves it to you. However, as good this pizza is, I have to say my favorite slice that I have had was in Venice. A little shop just around the corner from my Airbnb held pizza pies with the thickest bread on a pizza I have ever seen in my life! The bread was at least 2 inches thick and it was topped with the regular toppings you would see in every other pizza. I got the original pepperoni. The bread being so thick was so much different in regards to thinner slices in pizza in that it felt like I was eating more of a pastry rather than a cheesy slice of pizza. In my opinion, I liked this more because it felt like a cleaner slice of pizza and was more firm.
Lastly, while I have been in Orvieto, I tried truffles for the first time with a truffle pasta. Since they come from the region around me, they are at a greatly reduced cost in comparison to some restaurants that serve them in the U.S at scummy prices. The eatery was in the bottom of a cave in this town and had one of the coolest atmospheres in a restaurant since I have been in Italy. Back to the food, the taste of truffles can only be explained with saltiness and a buttery/richer taste. When added to pasta, it didn't add any tang to it, it just made every bite seem like a slower savory process in contrast to the sharp and fast tastes of regular tomato based pasta. I am glad I can finally say I have tried truffles before because they have always fascinated me in different articles about different dishes in the United States.
Food in Italy is a cultural view of togetherness. Everyone puts a lot of time and effort into making their dishes perfect, and recipes have been passed down from generation to generation. This is apparent when one tries the diverse menus in some of these restaurants and experiences this amazing slice of Italy as I have over the last three weeks. I will definitely miss it when I am back to my cooking/going out and eating food in the U.S next month. Till then, I will try to make it last as best as possible!