Recently in Rome Category

Allow me to sweep the dust off this blog, so I can quickly post a list of cheap eats in Rome’s Centro Storico. I’ve emailed variants of this guide to traveling friends for a long time now, but somehow never managed to put it on the web.

Two caveats: First, it’s been five years since Az and I lived in Rome; two since our last visit. Second, we were mostly vegetarian back then, so our dining staples tended to be pasta, contorni, and pizza. Which is not exactly a limiting diet, in Italy.

Around Piazza Navona:

My favorite lunches in town are both near Piazza Navona: first, there’s Lo Zozzone, which makes awesome sandwiches on hot, straight-from-the-oven pizza bianca that’s sliced to order and stuffed with ingredients of your choosing. The breasola, arugula, and parmesan is particularly popular; I’d generally go the tapenade-veggie-cheese route, and sometimes order a small second of nutella-ricotta for dessert. Best to arrive both hungry and patient, the lunchtime queue can be a bit of a jostle.

Even better is Da Tonino’s, which is officially called Trattoria Antonio Bassetti. I’m not at all sure if it has a sign, yet, and while I know they upgraded the decor when I visited a few years back (interior lighting used to be a couple of raw fluorescents) it’s a humble-looking place. The food isn’t fancy by any measure — it’s the simple pastas that shine here — but the taste of it all is stupendous and superlative. The pasta melanzane (eggplant) and pasta broccoli are my two favorites; in a perfect world their pasta fagiole would be spirited away somewhere safe to serve as the specimen against which all others should aspire. Check out the carciofi and brocolli romano (perfectly saute’ed with chili flakes and olive oil) as side dishes.

As for dinner, well, it’s gotta be Baffetto’s, right up the street. Look, there’s a reason this place is in every single guidebook: Baffeto’s is very, very good and very, very Roman pizza, with a two-dimensionally-thin crust that’s crunchily croccante, baked perilously close to the fire, and topped with a type of grated fresh mozarella that I’m convinced is the key to it all. (Order the Insalata Burina as an appetizer to sample the cheese raw; I’m personally torn between that and a starter bruschetta every time I go.) Be prepared for gruff service and a wait outside, with plenty of tourists and crowd-control all’italiana. It may seem gauche, but arriving early in the evening (like, ten minutes before they open) makes for a wayyy more civil experience. Plus, you’re more likely to get a seat downstairs where you can watch the two cooks work the pizza oven, which I always like. Contingency plan: if Baffeto’s won’t work, and you can’t make it to Trastevere, run with Da Francesco, around the corner at Piazza del Fico.

There’s also Da Alfredo & Ada, which is just down the street from Baffeto’s and Da Tonino. Another sign-less joint, I’d always referred to this place as the Three Sisters, since it’s run by three older women who fuss around each other like siblings. (They’re not.) It’s a tiny restaurant with a humble menu — in fact, don’t even kid yourself about a menu at all, the schtick here is that the ladies will serve you whatever they feel like serving you. Last time we went, I watched Ada scold a group for not eating their veggie sides; she promptly pulled them off their table and gave them to ours. Behave yourself — you’ll get some cookies after dinner if you do. (Check the great post and photos at tastingmenu for a second opinion.)

Around the Pantheon:

The best coffee in Rome (IMHO) is Caffe San Eustachio. And given that the queue at the bar sometimes goes three deep, it appears others feel the same. Il Gran Caffe is the paragon of espresso shots, though I swear there’s some cheating going on — the crema on top is so wonderfully fluffy that I suspect they’re doing something when they stir in the sugar for you. (A note on that: when the barista barks “zuccherato?”, he’s asking if you want sugar, and the answer is yes.) If you don’t believe me, check the weird metal guard they’ve put in to block the view of exactly what happens under the espresso machine. I know I’m not the only one who thinks something’s going on (a teensy hint of hot cream, or bicarbonate of soda, maybe?), but whatever it is, it’s good.

Also good at San Eustachio is Il Gran Cappuccino, a hefty-in-the-hand cappuccino that’s massive by Italian standards but seems just about right by me. (For more thoughts on dainty Roman cappucini, see my old post here.)

Caffe Tazza D’Oro is nearby, too, and while the decor is sweet and the place is something of a destination, I can’t say the espresso struck me as being notably better than anywhere else (in Rome, that is).

Gelato is the other staple that’s abundant around the Pantheon. Like the Trevi fountain, I think the Pantheon looks better at night, and always worth a minor course-correction when taking an evening stroll. Ditto for a few of the cremerias in the area — there’s La Cremeria right on the piazza, and the venerable Giolitti nearby. Della Palma wins on quantity (but not quality) and is wonderful to look at; it’s an OK place if you’ve got some kids in tow.

It was a stay-at-home weekend, as both Azure and Emelyn have a cough-and-cold combo that’s been pretty rough. (Emmie had some sniffles in Rome, but the doctors think she caught another virus right after, and it’s been way worse the second time around.) Both were running fevers earlier in the weekend, and Azure had to get up throughout the night to feed Emmie, who’s eating in smaller doses. Not easy.

On a happier note, staying in gave me a chance to go through the hour of tape we shot in Rome, and make a 6-minute movie out of it. I’m starting to understand why family home videos are so maligned- I dumped 13 gigabytes of footage onto Azure’s Powerbook, and we still had a hard time finding clips where the shaky camera didn’t leave the viewer seasick, or where my own bubbling, asinine commentary managed to achieve the same effect.

Anyhoo. Here’s the goods:

Alrighty, then. Pulling into King’s Cross as I type; so ends the nice part of Monday morning. I strongly suspect this’ll be another Week Of Pain at work - so see you Saturday!

Must. Stay. Focused.

That’s my mantra, this week — I’m multitasking more than ever. (7 product launches in 8 countries in 4 weeks, gah!). Making things worse (or better, just depends when you ask) is the fact that Azure, Emelyn, and I plan to punch out on Wednesday evening and head to Rome for a long Easter weekend. I can’t believe how much we’re all looking forward to this - 5 full days as a family sounds pretty unreal, right now.

Plus, it’s Rome, of all places. I’m clutching plenty of joy in my life, these days, but Rome remains an unrequited love, and leaving the place still pangs me more than I ought admit. As to how that crumbling, congested wreck of a city ever managed to shift the orbit of my life so many degrees, I have no idea. Nor do I know just how long we’ll keep circling it, from afar.

Course, it’s all different this time ‘round. Azure and I know the Centro Storico like the backs of our hands; either of us could plot you a course across the city that minimizes distance travelled while maximizing gelaterias en-route; knowledge like that dies hard.

Thing is, we’ve never done it with a stroller. (And nevermind a baby.) It’s not going to be easy. Hell, the thought of merely crossing the street in Rome just struck fear deep into my heart.

The trick, you see, to asserting pedestrian rights in Italy is to conspicuously not look towards oncoming traffic. Should you foolishly glance at a car barreling towards you, and they see you see them, man, there’s no way they’re slowing down. (They know you’re not that dumb.) No, in Italy, what you’ve got to do is to boldly and confidently step out into the middle of the road, and in a manner that indicates you are either (A) suicidal or (B) lack any peripheral vision whatsoever. In this case, drivers will slam on their brakes, afraid they might dent their cinquecento, and you’re golden. (An easy way to visualize all this is to harken back to the Indiana Jones movie where he blindly steps onto the invisible bridge - it’s exactly the same sort of ‘leap of faith’ pose you need for stepping off the curb.)

So I’m supposed to do that with a Bugaboo? Talk about raising the ante.

Then, of course, there’s the whole eating-and-drinking thing. Let’s be frank, shall we — Azure and I are not planning on visiting many museums and churches over Easter - this trip is all about precision-targeted raids at Pizzeria Da Baffeto’s, Pizzeria ai Marmi, Café San Eustachio, Gelateria di San Crispino, Da Tonino’s et cetera. They say the Italians love i bambini, but I don’t recall seeing a lot of high chairs and sippy cups in any of these spots. I can happily say that Emelyn remains pretty well-behaved in public, but still, we’re going to have to make a lot of judgement calls on whether or not our presence at a restaurant is, erm, appropriate.

Roma, ci vediamo subito. In the meantime, I should get back to work…

…and so it’s a 5am cab ride to Fiumicino, her eyes closed and dreaming to the taxi dispatcher’s lullaby, who is calling over and over for cinque cinque and quaranta sei, with promises of prenotazione and passegieri, until you’re suddenly both awake and there already, hurriedly hauling this thrown-together luggage set, a total of just 3 bags, but in sum nearly a year, and almost a home.

The heat, as singer/songwriter Glenn Frey once poignantly observed, is on. Day after day now of inhospitably high temperatures, 30s C and 90’s F, but it’s the whallop (that’s, like, a big dollop?) of humidity, stickily slathered across the city, that’s making things unbearable.

Our squat little pinguino still loyally conditions the air in our apartment, but in a tactful and rather non-confrontational manner (penguin-ish, to a T). It steers very well clear of the gruff, freon-oozin’ and temperature-stompin’ attitude that is the more vulgar custom of California’s air-con culture. No, Mr. Pinguino does not seem to cool the air at all, in fact, but instead hums and gurgles in a way that suggests an air conditioner is present, and therefore, ostensibly cooling things.

So, neat, it’s like a psycho-somatic or sub-conscious air conditioner. Or maybe it’s just busted.

One of the stranger shopping experiences Rome offers is a visit to Mitsukoshi Roma, the ‘local’ branch of the upscale Japanese department store.

Mitsukoshi is a cultural frontier outpost the likes of which i’ve never before seen: a full, multi-level department store catering solely to Japanese tourists. Every price is in Yen, every product listed in kanji, and every floor swarming with impeccably-uniformed Japanese salespeople.

The big kicker is that they don’t sell anything Japanese, nope, nothing so fun. Vended instead is a dull and clichéd assortiment of ‘Italian’ goods. (Think heavily-branded Gucci, Prada, Armani, and Diesel items, plus little gift-sized packs of olive oil.) The entire store, you see, is designed for package-tour tourists needing to snap up souvenir goods and gifts, but unwilling or unable to navigate the shopping experience in Rome proper.

The most delightfully bizarre aspect of Mitsukoshi is the purgatorial waiting room in the basement, near the bus garage, I suspect. It’s been done up in a sort of Mediterranean-meets-Sanrio motif, with a large and colorful paper-mache apple tree in the center, featuring a built-in bench seating a dozen bored-looking husbands, each one quietly chain-smoking while a Muzak’ed rendition of ‘Tico Tico’ plays in the background.

A slightly less surreal shopping experience awaits you at M.A.S. (Mas Allo Statuto), not a kilometer away from Mitsukoshi. No, the average ‘Romano Romano’ doesn’t hang out here much, either, but the budget-conscious (esp. Rome’s immigrant population) do. An unsavory amalgam of Price Club, Pic-N-Save, and a Goodwill shop, the massive M.A.S. hawks things like surplus army blankets, cheap Chinese cutlery, and amazingly unfashionable footwear by the basketful. Additionally, there’s lots of low-low-price sweatshop textiles, mostly poly/cotton blends with dubiously-licensed logos, like the ‘Fruit of The Lover’ T-shirts on sale for 3 euro each.

Remember how Pippin wails, “But what ‘bout second breakfast?” at Aragorn in Lord of The Rings? That line’s our new in-joke about italian cappuccino.

Okay, so it’s not particularly novel to note how things are smaller in Europe than The States — after all, these divergent cultures respectively regard Smart Cars and Hummer H2s as acceptable, non-comedic commuter vehicles. Swap continents, though, and these cars would draw more laughs than a clown ambulance. (It’s probably been that way since classic Cinquecentos and Caddies first rolled onto the streets.)

So the car thing is obvious, but it’s the pervasiveness of this sizing switcheroo that’s harder to convey to folks back home: everything here, from shower stalls to soda cans, seems of skewed scale or diminished heft.

Right then. And what was that about Italian cappuccino?

Best. Coffee. Ever. And nobody who’s sampled it would ever argue the point.

And yet… coming from a country where the ‘Thirsty-Two Ouncer’ was long ago deprecated to a mere ‘medium’ versus a ‘large’ 64-oz. pail of carbonated beverage, a nation where the words ‘super’ and ‘size’ are not only combined, but also conjugated in an imperative verb form, and where a zillion Starbuckses huck percolated swill in ‘Venti‘-ounce units, I can’t help but have my heart sink, just a bit, every time i’m served my Morning Cup here.

‘Cause it’s better coffee, sure, and it’s better milk, no doubt, but it’s just so damn… dainty. Hell, I’ve seen Java Jackets boasting double the diameter of the cappuccino china here.

But you can’t order two. It’s bad manners, against the rules, something only silly stranieri would do. (As, btw, is ordering cappuccino after 11 or so in the morning.)

Hence the little Tolkien joke. Our solution, you see, is the hobbit-inspired ‘Second Breakfast’, cunning and conniving, and awfully elegant, too: we’re two-timing the local cappuccino bars.

We’ll have a cappuccio at the bar closest to home, happily trading the morning ‘buongiornos’ all around, quaffing our coffee, and then stealthily slip around the corner, where we repeat the routine, down to the last drop. Topping off the tanks, so to speak.

So is this gluttonous? Yeah, probably. But, then again, one doesn’t get to drink Italian coffee every day of their lives. Rr do they?

The pet store behind the market has a parakeet who screeches “Ciao!!” when you walk in the door. He’ll say other stuff in Italian, too. And for some reason, this impresses the hell outta me.

Vaguely similar: today, a vespa cruised past at quite a decent clip, carrying just an old man (a veritable geezer, in fact), the crook of his walking cane wrapped around his neck, and its staff clutched between his knees. We wagered he must’ve been clockin’ an honest 25-30mph, and that over cobblestones, to boot. bello!

Elsewhere, an introductory “Sharing Your Site with RSS” bit i wrote for Webmonkey is up.

The big news of late: our little ‘Pinguino’ just got delivered.

You see, old italian palazzos like ours lack internal HVAC infrastructure (obviously), but some still avoid the brutish business of jamming air-conditioners above every window and doorway. In these buildings, you’ll notice at least one window in every unit features a small, porthole-like opening.

Turns out that when temperatures start cranking towards summer, a white truck shows up and delivers a rather cute A/C unit (a.k.a. ‘the Penguin’) to your doorstep, complete with a handy vent-hose which attaches to the window-porthole-thingamabob.

Anyhow, having a squat, strictly-seasonal air conditioner suddenly appear in your living room, Tardis-style, is a kinda funny thing. At the moment, i’m terribly tempted to decorate it, like it’s a Christmas Tree, but for SummerTime…

How’s this for a gripping opening line: “Yesterday, i had the oddest haircut.”

Let me qualify that, then: I’ve had my fair share of curious coifs back home — attributable to whatever fast-and-loose franchising policy drove the relentless expansion of the so-called “Fantastic” Sams’ grooming enterprise.

This was a tad different: I was playing ‘barbershop roulette’, walking into a barbiere at random, but — keeping the metaphorical safety-switch on — I requested he simply shear my head with clippers (and at the basically-bald ‘0’ setting). Hairdo-wise, that’s a tough one to screw up.

And screw-ups there weren’t: I walked out the door with exactly the super-short buzz cut I had in mind stepping in. The experience, on the other hand, was unexpected.

Ever seen those East-German or Russian-made flashlights that don’t need batteries, but instead have a hand-crank built into the grip? They’re tiresome, but if you repeatedly squeeze one fast enough, it provides light enough to get you around in a blackout. (You’ll find them today at yuppie-friendly Restoration Hardware, of all places.)

Turns out the poor barber’s clipper set worked on the same principle, completely mechanical throughout. He had a whole set of ‘em, covered in bright chrome and really heavy-looking, each for a different hair length. Obviously, this barber was an older fellow, but his wrinkled hands got those things running speedily, so they’d whirr like a push lawnmower.

(Looking back on it, I now recall seeing men getting their hair cut with similar clippers in pokhara, nepal — but that town was used to being without electricity for days at a time.)

Well, it felt odd. And in fact somewhat unpleasant, since the clippers’ blades pulled pretty hard — more like a manually-powered depilatory device than hair-trimmers. The barber, though, was about as nice as they get, and we talked about the weather some.

Remember J.F. Sebastian’s little car in Blade Runner? The one not unlike a mini airport-shuttle van conversion, which Syd Mead had remodeled and re-shaped with his trademark rhomboid angles?

I did a double-take last week, certain that I’d spotted the thing jammed into a tight Trastevere parking spot. Now, any auto buff will tell you Rome’s streets sport many a moto-carriage cute and strange, this town being the nexus of All Roads and whatnot, but this particular futu-rustic transport looked to have surreptitiously rolled out of Epcot Center back in ‘78, and been on the ‘lam since.

Actually, turns out it’s British — an ‘Elswick Envoy’, to be exact. Of note, it’s accessibility-designed from the chassis up: devoid of seats and pedals, the hatchback trunk pops open for a wheelchair, while arm-height accellerator and brake controls protrude from the dash. Just load, lock, and drive — plus, you can park almost anywhere.

The other night, walking around the Vatican’s walled borders, we came across an overpass I’d noticed before, but never given any thought. There’s a flight of stairs leading to the top, which we climbed — to discover the most delightful, perfectly-manicured stretch of railroad this side of Anaheim, California. It was, of course, the last hundred meters of Vatican City’s private railway; shiny, shrubbery-lined tracks which exit from a batcave-like opening set high into a thick brick wall, sealed with a massive iron gate. It’s cool.

Climb the dome of St. Peter’s and you can see the rest of the rail line out back, a Disneyesque station and train collection, all the cuter from that vantage point, seemingly sized to a perfect H.O. scale.

Walking back from the outdoor market at Andrea Doria, Azure and I were accosted by a restaurant tout. With folded red napkins over one arm, and laminated English-language picture menus tucked into the other, these smooth-talking ‘waiters’ are actually seasoned cattle-drivers, their long days spent roundin’ up and herding bovine tourists into the (not-at-all) ‘Italian Ristorante’ joints around Vatican City.

This time around, the tout hadn’t finished the opening bars of “Hello Mister, Good Pizza For You…” before spotting stalks of fresh asparagus peeping from our bags — also heavy with roman artichokes, fennel bulbs, sage, shallots, garlic, carrots, fresh peas, and Sicilian pachino tomatoes, to boot — whereupon he completely dropped his spiel and instead began to jealously ogle the produce.

Meanwhile, a second tout ambled over, at first wildly waving some menus of his own, then stopping, abruptly, to also admire the inventory of our plastic-bag cornucopias.

“Man, you guys really eat well at your place!”, the one tells us, with the other nodding rapidly in agreement, putting the menus away, and adding “I think it’s always better, eating at home, anyways.”

Damn straight it is. Happy Easter!

Watching vespas jockey for position as they barrel down the Lungotevere, one realizes these fearless riders are indeed the cultural (if not genetic) inheritants of the whole Ben-Hur business of chariot racing.

Equally striking are the sharp yells and shouts piercing the din of scooter-noise: Some of it is just two chatty riders on the same bike, of course, but I’ve also seen solitary riders screaming monologues as they zoomed past.

Now, drop me into that Italian two-stroke Circus Maximus, and I’d no doubt wail like the lot of ‘em — in fear — but even then I could never match the emotional intensity of the Romans. The riders I’ve seen shouting aloud remind me more of ‘colorful’ old Berkeley, where large portions of the sidewalk citizenry engage in similarly loud dialogues with parties neither present nor real.

All of which i just discovered to be just half-true here: Turns out it’s de riguer for motorino pilots to squeeze, wiggle, and jam their teensy cellphones beneath their helmets, so they’re barely visible, but flush-up against the ear.

This, you see, lets them yap away on the cell tel. all the way to work (just like any other commuter), while it’s the ambient noise, of course, which necessitates the strange and dopplered yelling that I, odd pedestrian out, kept hearing on my morning stroll.

The most beautiful spot in Rome that I know is the Protestant Cemetary, a curiously silent and shaded place that’s kept hidden by the looming Cestius Pyramid, some crumbling remnants of the Aurelian wall, and a foreboding alleyway of shuttered nightclubs bordering the blue-collar Testaccio district.

The few visitors here generally arrive to see the grave of John Keats, buried, as per his instructions, under the epitaph “here lies one whose name was writ in water”. Shelley, too, lies nearby; he had earlier toured Keats’ tomb and exclaimed, “it might make one in love with death to know that one should be buried in so sweet a place”.

Azure and I mostly visit, though, to pet the resident cats, and to see, just once more again, the gravestone of Emelyn Story, a grieving marble angel that was carved by the hand of her husband, American sculptor William Story, whose own grave lies next to hers, and that of their young child, Joseph.