I went on my honeymoon to Rome. I am trying to write a site on our travels and hope to also include some information that would also help out others.

Part of my site I want write about dining in Rome. For me, I found most of the food to be quite nasty. I was hungry for most of my trip. It was like a surprise Italian diet.

I know that was my fault for my ignorance. However, I don't want to write in my website that eating in Rome is a lost cause.

I didn't and probably still don't understand how one is supposed to order in a restaurant. How is one supposed to do that? In American you order a dish and the side items come with it. In Rome it doesn’t seem that way.

What dishes should I order? I remember getting Antipasti and thinking it would be something like here in the US with marinated vegetables. We got nasty sausages that only my dog would love. We called that dish Road Kill Sausage. What kind of dishes would an American like?

Also, we tried hard to find a supermarket or grocery store. We wanted some backpacking picnic foodstuff. The best we could find in Rome were small deli/convenient store type of places that were quite expensive. Sure an obese Italian in Rome is a rare sight, but are they thin because they can only shop at those places and cannot afford the food prices? We accidentally took a bus to the outskirts of Rome and saw our first and only supermarket. Where are these supermarkets? What are they called?

Thanks

We have a lot of this information on the web site:

Italy: Food/Restaurants - Restaurant Basics

Italy: Instructions - Food Shops

Most guidebooks have a section about restaurants and how to order. The DK (Eyewitness) guides are very good for this. Books with restaurant listings for Rome also have information about ordering.

Italy: Planning - Food Guidebooks

Pauline from Slow Travelers

Wow! I can hardly think og a response more in disagreement with my own opinion of Italy. On 9 trips covering about a total of 5 months, we have had 2 bad meals and maybe a dozen okay ones. On the other hand, my parents has about your reaction to the food on their one and only trip to Italy.

I think that this points us the need of doing your research before you go- a major reason we are on this board. With each trip I take to Italy, I learn more of the customs and the traditions of the culture. I get deeper into the foods. I have picked up enough of the language to communicate a little, although this helps more in small towns rather than in places like Roma and Venezia. Yet even in these big cities, it shows the wait staff that you have tried to do your part in advance. They will probably respond to your Italian with English because they want to use that and show it off as much as you want to show off your Italian, but don't take offence.

IN most Italian cities of size, there will be an outdoor market palce. In ROma, there are several outdoor markets that are open daily (Campo di Fiori and Testaccio are two). There will be gastronomie and rosticcerie where you can go and put together a full meal to take with. You can find bars where you can get a sandwich and other snacks.


IN any big attraction town or village, the food directly around tha major sights may not be very good. Places that cater directly to tourists may also be of lesser quality. You need to get out into the neighborhoods and look in and see who is dining there.

Give it another try. I have to believe that armed with a little more information and some better luck you will do just fine!

Wine Notes*Tuscan Restaurant List* Wine, Opera & Food* Trip

words of wisdom to live by from Stephen Sondheim's The Frogs
{The chorus is singing a prayer to Dionysus...}
Dionysius "A hymm to me, the god of wine..."
Xanthius (His slave) "I thought you were the god of drama?"
Dionysius "I am the god of wine and the god of drama. A little wine will get you thru a lot of drama"

Dean I am not sure you should take this post seriously. I detect a troll.

BOB THE NAVIGATOR
rplittle@bellsouth.net

Thanks for the links. I will check them out. I found the site through a google search. I thought it was just a sole messageboard.

I am sure I didn't enjoy the food mostly because I didn't know what to order. When I did pick items I usually picked the wrong thing.

No, I am not a troll. But Bob if you want to add a constructive post, that would be welcome.

Question: Why are you wanting to create a website for a trip that included disappointment with one of the traditional, hallowed joys of a city. Rome, like all of Italy, truly is a gourmet feast throughout. I'm sorry that you were unable to find that pleasure. Are you an adventuresome eater normally or do you like to stick to the tried and true? Maybe it would pay to do additional research regarding a target country for your future travels. If you know what to expect when traveling you can then even anticipate things with pleasure. What did your bride think? Did she also not enjoy the food?

www.janeandken.com
Reports and Photos for Italy 2001 and 2003, Spain, Tanzania, Peru, China, France

Welcome to SlowTalk!

As you can see, Slow Travelers take eating well very, very seriously ... and are stunned when someone reports that they didn't enjoy the food in Italy!

I, too, am sorry you didn't find food that you liked, but hope you'll take some time to look through the links posted above. After reading them, I'm sure you'll have better luck on your next visit.

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Also, we tried hard to find a supermarket or grocery store.

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Our apartment was very near the Pantheon in Rome and there were two small supermarkets within about a five minute walk. Supermarkets in Italian cities look a bit different than we're used to in the US; you really have to pay attention to see them tucked into the old buildings.

Slow Talk Message Board rules

Dean, I like your response very much. Armed with the right information, an open mind and the where-with-all to dine outside major tourist areas...one can't go too wrong! Although I have had a few lousy meals here and there and one memorably(is this a word?) bad one in a small town in Campania....

Otherwise I can tell you about the most incredible pear & cheese plate in Lucingnano, the juciest, biggest steak I ever saw in San Donato, the best pizza I've ever eaten in Naples, the most delicate pidgeon in Chianti, the incredible antipasto in Rome........

Assemblage, it's not unusal to find yourself lost in a foreign culture -- and food is a big part of a culture. Don't be discouraged. Your luck will improve with future trips.

The key to enjoying foreign culture is to have a sense of adventure. Try the food without knowing what it is or how to pronounce it! Instead of ordering familiar items, order something that the next table is eating. Better yet, talk to the people at the table next to you. If nothing works for you, drink more wine.

People say to avoid the tourist areas, but our best meal of the trip in Rome was a restaurant just a few steps from the Pantheon in the heart of the tourist area - Armando al Pantheon - which we went to because we thought we were following a review on SlowTrav - but it turned out that Pat from TX had recommended Antonio al Pantheon - on the other side of the Pantheon!!
Rome Restaurant Reviews

Pauline from Slow Travelers

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Originally posted by dean:
IN most Italian cities of size, there will be an outdoor market place. In ROma, there are several outdoor markets that are open daily (Campo di Fiori and Testaccio are two).

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Also, an extremely interesting open air market is "mercato trionfale". It is not in the very center of Rome, but it is awesome.

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There will be gastronomie and rosticcerie where you can go and put together a full meal to take with. You can find bars where you can get a sandwich and other snacks.

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During my (too few and far between) trips to Rome I never have a full lunch: I usually prefer to look for some "risticceria" where I can get myself a "supplì" or two. These are balls of rice garnished in several ways (often pieces of ham, peas and a piece of cheese in the middle, that melts and produces spectacular white and hot strands), rolled in grated bread and fried. They can also be garnished in different ways. The Italian way to handheld food!

Alice Twain
--
I don’t want to take what you can’t give / I would rather starve than eat your bread
I would rather run but I can’t walk / Guess I’ll lie alone just like before
                Pearl Jam, Corduroy

I second Alice on the suppli. And, like Dean, I have had maybe two or three sub par meals in Rome over a period of about 18 years travelling in Italy. As my partner would tell you, I go to Italy (and elsewhere) in order to eat, not just see things.

Of the "bad" meals that I recall, at least a couple were really my own fault or my own taste. Roman cooking can be quite different from the rest of Italy. It has both the Jewish ghetto style -- think fried artichokes -- and is the center of the "fifth quarter" (organ meats) based cuisine. Before I knew what I was doing, I ended up with tripe. Authentic, yes, but not to my taste.

What did you order that was so unpalatable? It might help to tell us all what it was.

Assemblage's experience really speaks to the benefits of "slow travel", that is, making the time to plan ahead and taking time to learn about a place once you're there.

My first trip to Italy was also my first time traveling alone internationally. I rented an apartment, bought a ticket, screwed up my courage and got on the plane without thinking too much about it so I wouldn't chicken out. It took several days before I located the mercato, the baker, produce market, etc. but even the process of wandering around looking for them led to discoveries. An open mind is probably the most important thing you can bring with you.

Whether a troll or not, this post is a salutary antidote to some of the hype out there on Italian food, and even a useful addition to our resources on Rome.

I'm not a big fan of Italian food, or at least of the few Italian regional styles I've tried so far; prefacing this immediately with a note that I've never explored Florentine cooking because my times in Florence and area, I've either had no money, or had no time, or in one case was following along with a native who was both a teetotaller and completely uninterested in food. I also don't know anything about Sicily, Venice, or the Piemonte.

What's left -- my experience of Milanese cooking, and central Italian food from Pisa to Ancona, from Rimini to Rome and Rieti, plus Italian food of varying authenticity I've eaten elsewhere -- leaves me with the impression that Italian food, while very healthy and almost uniformly pleasant, lacks variety, especially of technique. The endless pasta almost everywhere -- what a relief to take refuge in risotto, polenta or the rarer and rarer potato gnocchi -- and minute variants on tomato sauce does get to you after a while. There is certainly not the variety and inventiveness of French or Chinese cooking (or Jamaican, which is bewilderingly varied); and probably not of Indian. From the standpoint of variety, Italian food is similar to German, English, Japanese, Mexican, or North African.

In terms of variety, my usual haunt of Umbria is one of the worst offenders! although at least tomato is mostly replaced by the ubiquitous Umbrian truffle.

It's also amazing to me, in view of the shape of the peninsula, that fish should be so expensive and rare. On the actual coasts, I've had some very good seafood meals indeed, but 10 miles inland it's like you were in the American Midwest: not a scale or a tentacle in sight, often.

Mind you I couldn't disagree more with food in Italy being "nasty" (and my Dog will eat anything, with stubborn training I've even got him to enjoy pickles). Uniformly pleasant is more my verdict; also, for some, a certain openness of mind would be a prerequisite: take what each place has to offer, and enjoy it, it's almost invariably good, but don't expect Italian cooking to be like Italian-American, which is essentially the marvelous creation of starving Sicilian emigrants gone wild with the exuberance of food-rich America -- but an even more limited subdomain of the Italian food experience.

Rome. There are lots of little places in Rome where one eats none too well, to say nothing of the service: it's often hard to tell the tourist-catering outlet, basically a disguised cafeteria, from the better restaurants; I think they tend to be more visible, though, so you're more likely to fall into such a place than elsewhere (although I'll make an unkind exception for the Republic of San Marino, bless 'em). One notorious area for bad restaurants in Rome is the pocket SW of Termini, the upper via Cavour area: menus printed in 6 languages and locales chintzed up to .... look Italian! At any rate, I've had more mediocre food in Rome than anywhere else in Italy, and can identify with this post in that respect.

Also, I too have been puzzled over the years by how few large food stores there seem to be in Rome. I admit immediately that when I'm in Rome -- almost always daytrips down from Umbria -- I'm looking at churches and ruins; on the other hand I'm almost always on foot, and have crisscrossed the city on foot from the Vatican and the Trastevere to the Porta Maggiore, from the Aventine to the Ponte Milvio, from S. Agnese fuori to the Porta S. Pancrazio, by smaller and larger streets, trying to keep my eyes open: and I've seen very few food stores, mostly tiny Mom-'n-Pop alimentari with exorbitant prices. No virtue in antiseptic supermarkets full of mass-produced German chemical sweets and boxes of Barilla pasta, but still, I can connect with this post.

And yes, food is considerably more expensive in Europe than in the States; I by and large agree that the reasonableness of European portions (as opposed to the definite excesses that so stagger European visitors when they come to the US) is certainly in part due to high food prices.

Still, a main purpose of travel is to open our minds and make us more fully human. I am intensely delighted with this variety and wouldn't for a minute wish for an American experience in Italy. Bring on the Road-Kill, I like it.

Bill

Gazetteer of Italy

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Originally posted by scottgreenwood:
Of the "bad" meals that I recall, at least a couple were really my own fault or my own taste. Roman cooking can be quite different from the rest of Italy. It has both the Jewish ghetto style -- think fried artichokes -- and is the center of the "fifth quarter" (organ meats) based cuisine. [...]

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Unlike what you may think, the "fifth quarter" used to be very popular thoughout Italy. It is (IMHO) an unfortunate case that these delicious meats are disappearing. Tripe, for instance, used to be popular not only in Rome but also in Tuscany (think of lampredotto) and Milan (minestrun cont la trippa). One wonderful meat course you may try in southern italy are arrosticini, skewered lamb intestines and other "fifth quarter" parts. In Emilia Romagna, where beef used to be not that common and pork and poultry were the most used meats, cotechino and zampone are produced using mainly cotenne (the pork's skin). And there are also all the various (delicious) products of pork blod (for instance marsapan in Pavia, migliacci and buristo in Tuscany, sweet sanguinaccio (a cake with raisins and choocolate: sublime!) in southern Italy.

Alice Twain
--
I don’t want to take what you can’t give / I would rather starve than eat your bread
I would rather run but I can’t walk / Guess I’ll lie alone just like before
                Pearl Jam, Corduroy

Alice, you're a mischievous woman! As you know very well, few Americans will go anywhere near tripe or pajata, or -- an Umbrian dish in October -- palomba alla ghiotta, which to be made properly, should be cooked beak feathers and all, then dealt with afterwards. Not for us, or most of us at any rate, the delights of squid or octopus in its ink, Sardinian and Corsican cheeses with worms, etc. or even something so tame as brains or sweetbreads, or the marrowbones of osso buco.

I remember several meals with antiseptic compatriots where they starved and I ate my own meal and nine-tenths of theirs as well (I've been known to tuck away a few in my time); one particular dinner stands out, in Caen in Normandy, where the woman and her son had duly ordered the Tripes à la mode de Caen, but faced with gelatinous oily masses of all-too-clearly intestines in their plate, they ceded theirs to me. If I had trouble finishing it all, it may have been from earlier in the day, when we'd gone thru Isigny, where I insisted they try the cream there -- famous throughout France -- and because it was fermented, as it properly is, they didn't like that either, so I slurped up a pint of the stuff in the back of the car before lunch.

Like some posters to this thread, my first reaction was "Harumph! How could anyone say this about Italian cooking, best I've ever had!", but then I read Bill's response. One of the irresistible things about reading Bill's posts is how darned open-minded he is about others' opinions, and how darned reasonable he is! It is true that regional cuisines can be somewhat invariable, partially attributable to a parochial attitude towards food, but also to the practice of mostly using foods that are in season and therefore fresh, at their peak, and local. On a vacation of two to three weeks, and with a little research or just luck, one doesn't normally have time to exhaust the possibilities of the menus. Some foodie friends of ours, on the other hand, spent 9 months in Florence and eventually cooked in more often, just to provide themselves some variety in the preparation. And naturally, if one's diet is restricted by choice or necessity, the range becomes more limited. Tourist-trap restaurants are in general horrendous, of course. But our experience overall has been that great pride and interest is taken, by restauranteurs and diners alike, in what is served and how it tastes. We eat much better now when in Italy than on our first visit five years ago.

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Originally posted by Bill Thayer:
Alice, you're a mischievous woman!

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Oh, yes, I am. ^____^ And I didn't even say how much I like horse's meat and rabbit... By the way, my dinner yesterday was chicken livers in a marsala wine sauce.

Alice Twain / but I must admit that I do not like tripe and I haven't yet found the courage to taste the marrow in ossbüss, but one day I will: if I learned to like lungs... ^_^
--
I don’t want to take what you can’t give / I would rather starve than eat your bread
I would rather run but I can’t walk / Guess I’ll lie alone just like before
                Pearl Jam, Corduroy

Reasonable Boobykins weighing in again -- thank you Carol, I'm sure there'll be moments when it'll be useful to remember with a chuckle that I'm reasonable -- and actually getting around to answering an item in Post #1 that we all overlooked, ordering in an Italian restaurant.

For your initial orientation, do see Pauline's link already supplied by her above, Restaurant Basics.

On which I'll expand or refine just a bit. Italians being the wonderfully flexible people they are -- speak of reasonable -- there is almost no constraint as to what courses you order. You do not have to order Antipasto, Primo, Secondo, Contorno, Dolce, Caffé, Grappa. You may skip any of these, or double up on any: a meal of 2 primi with 3 contorni, followed by just coffee, will not raise eyebrows nor waiterly resistance more than antipasto, secondo, 3 dolci.

Italian restaurateurs are in fact so comfortable with skipping some items, doubling up on others, that should you want 2 or 3 primi, or 2 or 3 desserts, you'll be asked if you want a "tris": reduced portions of each, making up a full plate of variety, like a little smorgasbord. If you are hungry -- as you seem to have been, alas -- you should be careful and specify: no, I want full portions. (When I want three desserts, I want three desserts, not a collection of dubious smidgins of stuff; but the Italian restaurant is more than willing to accommodate a beautiful woman who wants to keep her figure yet taste what they have to offer, that as Carol says, they're proud of, to boot.)

The only bit of resistance I've ever found, and it's pretty much universal, is in getting my grappa or brandy with my coffee rather than after. I like yoking the two, but in Italy it takes a bit of work. Odd, since they'll all make you a caffé corretto ("proper coffee"!) by dumping the booze of your choice into your coffee outright.

There is a large Despar supermarket on Salvatore Giustiniani, the street that runs from the Pantheon to Piazza Navona. It is on your right coming from the Pantheon and is easy to miss because it is in an old building with very few windows, but if you go inside, you will see room after room of grocery store.

There is another large supermarket on Via Monterone, between Sant'Eustachio and Vittorio Emanuele. It is on your lelft coming from Sant'Eustachio and is very easy to miss for the same reason as the other one.

In the historic center, shops are in old buildings that cannot be changed, so many times they do not look like what we are used to. Even in small towns this is true (except that they ususally have a more "American-style" market just outside of town). I posted these photos of Cetona shops to give people an idea of what to look for:
Cetona Shops

Pauline from Slow Travelers

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Originally posted by Bill Thayer:
The only bit of resistance I've ever found, and it's pretty much universal, is in getting my grappa or brandy _with_ my coffee rather than after.

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ANother thing to be remeberded is that if you are at a restaurant and order just a salad you may happen to be answered "Madam/Sir: this is a restaurant, if you don't want to eat, you may as well leave!". I have seen this once: this very thin, very pale girl asking in a pretty fancy restaurant for "just a salad with some low fat cheese". Laughed my lungs out for the whole dinner each time the owner came to the dining room. ^_^

Alice Twain
--
I don’t want to take what you can’t give / I would rather starve than eat your bread
I would rather run but I can’t walk / Guess I’ll lie alone just like before
                Pearl Jam, Corduroy

Our travel to Italy is primarily an oeno-gastronomic adventure--an "eatinerary", if you will. We use many resources to find those special places which are both welcoming and serve the traditional cuisine of the Province and/or Region. We look to do a mix of restaurants. Those that are at the cutting edge and those t