Top 10 restaurants in Rome

As more and more visitors are returning to Rome I am getting asked this question often, hence the post!  I originally posted this 10 years ago………that’s why they call Rome the ‘Eternal City’, nothing much changes very quickly, and when it comes to food, I am eternally grateful for that.

My definition of a top Roman restaurant is one that has one or more of the following characteristics:

• has been in operation for at least one hundred years
• is family run 
• specialises in traditional Roman cuisine (simple, fresh, and offal based)
• has a menu that changes depending on what is available at the market that day
• is frequented by Romans
• offers excellently cooked gluten free pasta dishes 

I found all the following through living here, walking past them, sampling them extensively (as well as a lot of others). There are also many excellent restaurants in the suburbs of Rome but I have stuck to the city centre, where most visitors will be staying and prefer to eat. So here goes, not in any particular order:

1.  Antica Hostaria Romanesca – Piazza Campo dei Fiori, 40 – 06 6864024

I have been going here for over 25 years. The bread and fettucine are home-made by the Nonna who sits in the small front room of the restaurant and makes it while you watch if you are lucky. Her grandson Luca and his sister run the restaurant. It consists of one small room plus a square of the piazza. There is a sign on the wall written in local dialect warning about the wait and not to bother the chef with complaints.  But it is worth it.  Dishes are individually and lovingly prepared, and spilling over with food of the highest and freshest quality. 

The Spaghetti alla Carbonara, Pollo con Peperoni (a uniquely Roman dish)/chicken with capsicum, and Fegato alla griglia/grilled liver (featured above along with the roasted porcini mushrooms and puntarelle salad, burrata cheese and grilled zucchini, and a dessert called Sbriciolata alla nutella) are the best I have ever tasted.  But everything on the menu is good, cheap, and cooked with care and attention to detail.  Try any of the specials as they will be seasonal and based on the chefs traditional knowledge. And while you are waiting you will have the spectacular Campo dei Fiori to watch – full of people, no cars, magnificent medieval buildings, and a statue of Giordano Bruno, the last person burnt to death there in 1600 for heresy (proclaiming that the earth circled around the sun rather than the other way around).  Reflect on how, if waiting for some spectacular Roman food while sipping wine and eating warm bread is the main problem you have at the moment, then life is much improved since 1600.

2. La Carbonara  – Piazza Campo dei Fiori,23 .- 06 6864783

You will be lining up often with international movie stars and politicians to get a seat but it is not a pretentious or expensive place, just a Roman institution.  At the other end of the piazza from Antica Hostaria Romanesca, it is thankfully much larger indoors so you can eat either on the piazza or inside with air conditioning / heating. It produces very traditional, high quality Roman dishes. The Fiori di Zucca/fried zucchini flowers (featured below along with the lamb chops and potatoes, and Carbonara in the background), Saltimbocca alla Romana (veal with proscuitto and sage) are the best I have ever tasted and the Carbonara is on a par with Antica Hostaria Romanesca.  Again you will have the Campo dei Fiori piazza to look out upon and will be entertained by a parade of non-stop buskers.

3. Da Luigi – Piazza Sforza Cesarini 23 (between Campo dei Fiori and Piazza Navona), 06 6865 946

I stumbled on this place when I used to live around the corner and noticed it was always full with lines of people waiting. Da Luigi is packed full with Roman families who like to keep this place a secret.  It is squashed along the side of a tiny piazza for outdoor seating but there is also extensive seating indoors in a variety of wood panelled rooms.  Here you will find reasonably priced, down-to-earth Roman dishes specialising in sea food but also pizzas and meat dishes.  It is noisy and always crowded and there is nothing to look at, but the variety and good reliable quality of the food makes up for it. Try the fried artichokes.

4.  Ai Spaghettari – P.za di San Cosimato, Trastevere 57-58-59-60

A beautiful, succulent and rich experience of a typical, restaurant, that has nevertheless been around for half a century or more.   It is based in the most traditional part of Rome, Trastevere, a mostly pedestrian only precinct, which is now packed with restaurants and is an enchanting neighborhood to eat in.  Ai Spaghettari is always noisy, has the television blaring, and is always full.  A pizza oven greets you at the door and you can watch while your pizza is made, being flung up in the air and all. There are vast amounts of seating outside and in, and service and menu are both good, featuring lots of traditional Roman specials.  If you don’t book you may be waiting a while but you will get a seat eventually. (no GF pasta or pizza)

5.  Pizzeria Popi Popi – Via delle Fratte di Trastevere 45, 06-589-5167

I avoided going to this restaurant for years as it looks like the typical tourist trap often found in Trastevere.  Red checkered table cloths, tables set outside in front of a beautiful, white marble church, and filled with tourists.  Then my Italian husband and his mates took me there.  Now we know the waiters by name.  Frequented by both Italians and tourists alike, its cheap and cheerful outdoor atmosphere make it a superb summer Roman dinning experience (and indoors for Winter).  They have a large and traditional menu (including pizza) and the food always tastes surprisingly good for its quick production, volumes turned-over, and large variety.  Their Tiramisu is one of the main  reasons we keep going back.  By the way, once I asked the waiter what the significance of the name was.  He told me its the sound that Italian men make when they squeeze the breast of a woman “popi, popi”.   Booking is optional but recommended, but if you just turn up the waiters will look after you. (no. GF pasta or pizza)

6. Ciak – Vicolo de’ Cinque, 21 ,Trastevere 06 5894774

Carnivores unite! (You can probably tell by now that I am not a vegetarian but all of these restaurants have great vegetable dishes and vegetarian options on offer too, although probably best to avoid this one if you are a vegetarian). The window is packed with hanging dead animals of the kind not often seen – boar, pheasant, deer and hare.  Deep rich, red salamis of wild boar, pastas with venison ragu, stews of hare, Fred Flintstone steaks of beef, pork and veal are all on the menu here and nothing much else.  If meat is what you are after you will get any kind your heart desires (including heart…..).  It feels like you are eating in a Tuscan agroturismo with bare brick walls, lively noise and Chianti bottles everywhere.  The huge open grill is at the front and you can go and choose your type and cut of meat before cooking.  Best to book as it tends to be a restaurant that people go to specifically for this kind of food. (no GF pasta)

7.  Spaghetteria L’ Archetto – Via dell’Archetto, 26, Trevi Fountain 06 678 9064

This is the Frat Boy version of these top ten restaurants in that it has foregone all the add-ons of Italian cuisine and just focuses on the pasta.  Exactly 100 different pasta dishes can be ordered here and not much else.  But why would you bother coming here for anything else, their pasta dishes are fantastic?  Originally another restaurant I stayed away from as it seemed too gimicky, but I was dragged again along by my husband and his mates who had all eaten here for years.  Once I tasted my Fiume di Londra (London Fog) pasta dish I understood that no short cuts had been taken in delivering high quality, mouth watering food. This is a great place to go when you are sick of the same menus in all the other more traditional restaurants of Rome, although here you can get the traditional plates as well of course.  Try also the Pasta al Limone and the Penne alla Vodka a traditional dish that many restaurants disdain to put on their menus but is delicious and won’t make you drunk (although perhaps best not served to children).  Their vegetable dishes and Tiramisu are pretty good too.  Outside seating is on the cobblestoned street so cars will pass at your elbow.  Inside there is plenty of space available although it is like a warren, all underground, and airless at times.  If you book try to sit outside or ask for a table close to the entrance. 

8. Taverna Agape – Piazzetta di, Vicolo di S. Simeone, 26, (near Piazza Navona) 066879694

If you are looking for a romantic night out then this Roman institution is perfect. It offers everything except pizza and looks out onto a quiet medieval piazza complete with its own fountain. Try the pasta Cacio e Pepe (traditional Roman sheeps cheese and fresh black pepper) pasta.

9. Osteria dei Cappellari, Via dei Cappellari, 66, (near Campo dei Fiori) 069436 6598

A beautifully decorated, traditional osteria with relaxing ambience and excellent, seasonal food, everything except pizza. Its small and intimate, crowded with candles, mirrors, hats (cappelli) and a piano, on a cobblestoned medieval pedestrian street where once hat makers had their trade. Dishes are highly seasonal, portions are generous and desserts unmissable. Try any of the types of beef steak (filetto di manzo) here, especially if its with Porcini mushrooms. No seating outdoors but why do you need it when it looks so good inside?

10. Il Marchese, Via di Ripetta, 162 (near Piazza del popolo) 0690218872

Last but not least for an excellent cocktail and/or traditional roman food with a twist, in a place that feels ancient and new, elegant and informal all at the same time…………Try the steak tartare and the house cocktails.

If you enjoyed this blog you may enjoy reading my books. Click here https://brontejackson.wordpress.com/books/

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La mia Garbatella

Everyone loves their own suburb. And I do love mine.  But then Garbatella is not like any other suburb in Rome, or anywhere else.

Nestled in a quiet corner between major arterial roads leading south out of Rome, and only ten minutes drive from the center of Rome, it boasts quiet communal gardens, hidden staircases in place of roads, decorative archways, green oases and tranquil piazzas.  Walking along pedestrian only paths that climb hills and meander along parks, watching women hang out laundry on communal lines while men sit smoking in shady corners and children run up and down, it feels more like the center of the many quiet little towns found in the countryside near Rome.

After having lived in the adjoining suburb, built only forty years later, where (in my apartment that was on a lean and eventually fell down), the rubbish truck woke me at 1.00 am each night with its flashing lights and loud mechanical grinding, and where at 7.00 am each morning, as the walls were so thin, the neighbors alarm clock woke me in time for work; and having lived in the very center of Rome in a medieval apartment block whose bathroom roof caved in one night and where I could go for a week without ever seeing a living plant; I stumbled on this green suburb full of well built houses by accident in 1998 (as the only suburb I could afford which was close to the city center), and wondered how it was possible that such a jewel could exist.

Slowly I found out, although some of the facts are a bit hazy and like all good creation stories several versions exist of the same event.  In the 1920’s someone, let’s say Mussolini, decided to build a suburb outside of Rome in the countryside to house in particular, the poor.  It could have been a social experiment, one that was popular at the time as cities all over the world were planning how to effectively house more people.  Gandhi came on a visit here, dressed in his white robe, to see an example of what could be offered to ensure that even the poorest could be housed effectively.  This event at least is fact as there is a picture of it on a sign post in my suburb.

Or it could have been that as the Vatican and the Italian government had made a truce to peacefully co-exist as separate states, and in thanks to the Vatican for a sizable donation, the Italian government decided to clear the slums that bordered around and obscured the Vatican, building in their place a huge driveway and stately road leading up to the Vatican (called appropriately Conciliation Street) and necessitating the removal and re-housing of thousands of city slum dwellers.  There are several other versions but they all involve re-housing city slum dwellers into low-rise blocks, built to look like the mid 1800 apartment blocks they were used to, but placed within communal gardens, a unique setting in Italy.  Due to the fact that the new suburb was miles away from where these families had always lived, it was built complete with kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, restaurants, hotels, a public bath house, theater, playgrounds, fountains and piazzas.  As though it had always been there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you build a suburb from the beginning you have many advantages.  Like what it will look like and what goes where.  In addition you have the opportunity to use the buildings and the spaces to foster the behaviors you desire and to create community.  Especially necessary when thousands of people are uprooted and plonked down miles away in an alien environment.  So architectural competitions were held to create all the public buildings (theater, baths, hotels), resulting in all the best architects of the time contributing to the new suburb.  Public spaces were created within each city block so that apartment blocks faced onto private yet communal gardens, walk ways, washing lines and other places to gather, just like the small pedestrian streets and spaces that had previously defined their inner city neighborhoods. Curving streets, round piazzas and even rounded and curved buildings created spaces that felt organic rather than planned.  The use of staircases to connect streets or instead of them, created spaces for pedestrians to travel and move around the suburb never meeting any traffic, much like a small country village.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garbatella has moved through many phases as the city of Rome grew up and around it, engulfing the fields that once surrounded it. From being shamed as a modern-day slum unwelcome to outsiders (but with very cheap rentals to foreigners who didn’t know about that), to a center for cutting edge arts and radical politics, full of some of the best traditional Roman restaurants and trendy new wine bars.  It is still a place where most people who live here also work in the suburb, where many generations of the same family live and where people if they are not related at least know of each other and who they belong to. (I once walked into a cafe and was asked “who did I belong to?” before i was asked for my order).

It is a place where Roman dialect rather than Italian is the main language and where you can sit down to lunch and know that every thing on your table has been grown, butchered or made by the local person you bought it from.  It is a place where you can wander on a quiet sunlit afternoon through lovingly tended gardens, sit on benches under trees and hear only a fountain bubbling, and get lost rambling along tree-lined paths under arches and up staircases around a whole suburb without ever crossing a street.  So I do love my suburb.  La mia Garbatella!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like to read more about La bella Garbatella you can do so in my book Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all Seasons.

https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Daze-Bronte-Dee-Jackson/dp/192212933X

Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all Seasons

Hi all,

In celebration of it being the 70th Anniversary of the Republic of Italy (and who really needs a reason to celebrate all things Italian), I wanted to take the opportunity to remind you of, or introduce you to, my book Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all Seasons.  Please see below for a synopsis and sneek preview.  This book can be purchased through Amazon worldwide (in hard copy of as an e-book), from the FAO and Lion Bookshops in Rome, or in any Australian bookshop.  Links are provided below.  Happy reading!

Synopsis

This is a book about Italy, Rome and me.

It is not a book about falling in love and marrying an Italian, running a B&B, or restoring a farmhouse.

I arrived in Italy on a whim as a result of having won an airline ticket in a raffle. The city of Rome captivated my heart and I decided to stay awhile.  It was the year before Berlusconi came to power.  Seventeen years later we were both still there.  Much to everybody’s amazement, particularly our own (although I can’t strictly speak for Berlusconi).

Rome and Italy are places of extreme contrasts.  The Italian political system, its Universities, banks, and industries are in disarray.  Italy has always seemed to be on the verge of crumbling according to many economic indicators.  And yet somehow life continues on a daily basis in much the same way it has for hundreds of years.   The breath taking countryside, stunning islands and beaches, non- stop blue skies, excellent food and wine, art collections, fashion, family, tightly knit neighbourhoods, rituals and traditions, and the beauty of the cities make it hard to be gloomy or to reconcile the failure of so many of its institutions.  It is easier to have an excellent coffee, stop and chat awhile with your neighbour.

This is a book about how seasons, food, family, architecture, nature, traditions, and weather all come together to create the lifestyle of Italians much more so than their economic well being, and why it looks like La Dolce Vita to most of us.   It also debunks some myths of La Dolce Vita and shows the not so attractive side of being Roman/Italian that tourists don’t get to see.

The book is divided into four sections – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.  It describes the city of Rome, its inhabitants and lifestyle for each season and time of year – the food, rituals, events, practices and behaviour that go with each season and why.  This is a fundamental key to the differences between an Anglo-Saxon culture based on economic rationalism and one which is dictated by the weather/natural environment and by human relationships.  And it is a difference that has far reaching effects in all aspects of Italian society, economics and attitude.

The book also follows my movements as I participate in each season’s rituals and practices, some of which are easy, some not, some I still find bizarre and some I revel in.   It highlights several key relationships I have with other Italians and ex-pats and talks about life in Italian society from their point of view.

It includes chapters about important Italian events such as the annual celebration for the Liberation of Italy from the Nazi’s.  It covers my local festival which celebrates a traditionally impoverished neighbourhood where some of Italy’s most important film makers, artists and actors came from.  It talks about the importance of the first sea swim of the year, what happens on Year’s Eve and why, what Italians do on the weekends, and some classic and unforgettable examples of how the Italian state is run.

It details areas of Rome and its surrounding that are not covered in Guide Books, and gives surprising and key information on how to survive and enjoy Italy.  It provides little known facts and advice about Italian society, lifestyle and behaviours that enable the reader to understand, appreciate and get the most out of any experience of Italy.

It is also a personal story that brings alive the spectacular environment in which it is told.  If you have ever wondered what it would be like to live in a country that insists on a three hour lunch break (in spite of it being the eighth most industrialised country in the world); or why if you are related to someone on the Police force, are wealthy, or  a blonde female, the usual rules and laws of the country don’t apply to you; or what life would be like in the absence of economic rationalism, then you will enjoy this book.

This book is about what it is like to be so different from all those around you while identifying and appreciating things that were always missing in your own life.  It is a book about living an unending and continuously surprising adventure, about following your heart, and living amongst people who continuously use theirs.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 3 – FRANCESCA AND RITA

Are our neighbours, were our neighbours.  Today is a sad day.  It is the first day without them.  They moved out yesterday, after renting here for fifty years.  It is the end of an era and everyone in the whole apartment block is sad.

Francesca moved here with her parents when she was nine.  Her play mates are still mostly living here too.  Their parents all knew each other, she along with her other playmates, stayed here until they were married, and then returned to live here with their husbands and wives.  They then had their own children, who are now also friends.

Antonio and Gianni played together as small boys.  Antonio still lives in the same apartment underneath us, and has lived to see Gianni marry Antonella who became Francesca’s best friend.  Marianna’s mother and Francesca’s mother were best friends when Marianna and Francesca were children.  Marianna helped Francesca nurse her dying husband, who introduced Marianna to hers.

We live in a tightly knit neighbourhood.  It is unwise to get annoyed at anyone as they are usually related to someone you know quite well, or depend on (the pharmacist, the mechanic, the owner of the local trattoria – Antonio’s brother owns ours).    Many people live within walking distance of where they grew up, and where their extended family lives.  The inhabitants of this quartiere are polite to, but a little wary of, outsiders.  They are fiercely proud and protective of their suburb, and find it a little unusual that anyone would voluntarily come and live here.  For generations the traffic has been going the other way.

It probably explains why I get stared at a lot.  If I lived in one of the suburbs that are popular with foreigners, I wouldn’t get a sideways glance, but here people have the look of, “but WHY would you choose to live here, with us?!!”  It explains partly why, when your neighbours do get to know you, they embrace you with the fierceness and tightness of a mother about to be separated from her first born.  In fact you can’t get away from them, ever again.

We have a well kept, shady, shared garden area as part of the apartment complex we live in.  Our apartment complex is not public housing but was built for employees of the post office just up the road.  Marianna is one of the only post office employees left that still lives here.  The communal area consists of a rather large space, surrounded by trees and grass, sculptured by hedges and containing three separate sitting areas, complete with benches.  It is astounding to have this kind of facility in Rome.  Most apartment blocks are built one right up against each other with barely a wall between them.  The last one I lived in I didn’t need an alarm clock, the man on the other side of the wall had one and it always went off at the time I needed to get up.

I was overjoyed when I first saw the garden.  I imagined myself sitting there at any time of day, relaxing in my own bit of green space.  But the reality is I go there stealthily.  First I scout from my balcony to see if anyone is sitting in it, and then I run there as quickly as possible to avoid being spotted by anyone else.  Then I sit in the part the farthest away from the buildings and bury my head in a book, scowl, or close my eyes and chant if anyone comes close.

This amount of preparation and strategic planning is necessary.  I discovered early on that sitting there by myself was a beacon for anyone else in the apartment block to come down and join me.  Apparently what I am communicating by sitting by myself in the garden is, “Help! I am lonely and would like some company, please come and talk to me”.

Francesca often watched me when I was in the garden, waving and smoking from her balcony.  She folds boxes for a living and is also a Sarta (dressmaker).  The boxes are the staple part of her income in a land where there is no unemployment benefits, or pensions for widows.  Her husband knew the man for whom she folds boxes.  Out of charity the work was passed on to her after his death.  She is a woman who always manages to look elegant, from her fingernails to her hair.  She has a rasping cough, never walks anywhere, and has laughter continually on her face.  She is a chain smoker so there is always a cigarette on her face as well.  The entire house smells of smoke.  She is always at home, as is her twenty-five year old daughter, Rita.  Rita is tiny, like most Italian women at that age, and she could pass for fifteen.  She is beautiful and has the dark features of her Arabic father.

As I often work from home, and sometimes also my husband, Francesca was always coaxing us over for a coffee or a chat.  It was a welcome relief for me, from a day spent concentrating in front of a computer.

What first attracted me to Francesca was that she would often ring on my doorbell wearing only her pyjamas.  At midday.  I would usually still be wearing mine, and the relief to find someone else that not only thought that was OK, but that it was OK to go calling in them, was enormous.  Sometimes Rita would poke her head out of their door, and she would be wearing only her pyjamas too.  Sometimes we would spend quite a bit of time chatting together from our doorways, drinking coffee, in our pyjamas.  Francesca would always invite me in but I refused to cross my thresh hold wearing only my pyjamas.  I find it hard enough to get dressed some days as it is.  This never stopped Francesca though, or Rita, who would regularly come visiting in their pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers.  It was a private, female world we had on the top floor of our apartment block, where we knew no one would ever appear unless we knew about it first.

I first met Francesca and Rita a few months after we had moved in, during a violent rain storm.  Water had come streaming down the stairs from the roof and was forming a small lake, in the entrance hall of our apartment.  Both my husband and I stood helplessly in the corridor outside our apartment watching the flow, and not knowing what to do.  Next thing I knew, two women had bowled out of their apartment and were in mine, mopping my floor and stuffing towels on the stairs while shouting for the bloke downstairs to come and unblock the drains on the roof.  They mopped and sopped and then went back into their apartment leaving my husband and I staring at each other and wondering what we would have done without them.  We had met them once.

Yesterday we helped them pack and said goodbye to them as they drove their car out of the compound one last time.  We were all crying, and smoking.  Many of the residents had come out to say goodbye and for each hug there would be fresh tears and a fresh cigarette.  Francesca did not want to go.  The landlord wanted to sell the property and had offered her a substantial amount of money to move, two years before her lease was up.  It was more than she could hope to earn in a year.  She was entitled to stay in the apartment, even if it sold, for another two years but then she could be given notice without any compensation.  So Francesca had chosen a new rental in a seaside town about an hour south of Rome.  She could not afford to rent in Rome any longer.   She would be close to her brother who also lived there.  With the compensation she could afford to furnish the new rental and the furniture would be hers not the landlords.

Although I often declined Francesca’s daily invitations over the years, it was comforting to me that she was there.  That if I ever wanted company, a cigarette, an egg, or to know that someone would hear me scream, she was there.  I had lived some hard and sad times in this apartment and spent much time alone as a result.

I rarely spoke that much when I visited, as I usually found it a stretch speaking Italian, let alone the Roman dialect that she spoke.  I rarely offered much of myself, and I gained a lot from being with her.  Hanging out the washing together on the roof, talking about whether it would rain or not today, whether the supermarket was open, what kind of tomatoes were in season, what I was going to eat for dinner, gave me a well needed sense of normality.  Having a two minute connection with someone living in the same space and time as me, was grounding, and somehow kept me connected to life at a simple and basic level.  I felt not alone.  Not in a crowded sense, but in an “I am not on my own” kind of way.

I wasn’t really on my own, I had my husband, I had friends, but in day to day living, in daily moments when I was alone, Francesca made me feel not on my own.  I understood then how all the women in the Palazzo got on with things.  Antonella, who lived in the ground floor apartment and was Francesca’s best friend.   Marianna, whose husband left her after childbirth, nine months after they were married, twenty five years ago.  Rita, Francesca’s daughter, who could not find work.  And Francesca, whose husband died after a few short years of marriage, and who eked out a living, and who was never going to be able to afford to buy her own home.  They were always together, the women of this Palazzo, daily visits of minutes at a time.  Making sure none of them felt on their own.

In the weeks leading up to their departure, we spent most evenings with them, eating with them, going over for a chat, or just sitting together.  One evening Rita read out a letter which was addressed to my husband and I.  In the letter she told us that the thought of leaving her home where she was born, and where she had nursed her father until his death, had been continually traumatic and at times paralysing over the past few months, but that throughout it all she had felt not alone because of us.  She told us through her poetic writing, that just our presence across the hallway, our hellos and other greetings, our smiles and our availability, had helped ease the burden for her, and that she was grateful.

We didn’t see Marianna the day that Francesca and Rita left.  We saw her the next day as we were driving our car into the compound.  Her face was haggard with grief, and when she saw us she lurched towards us, almost slamming herself onto the windscreen, like a leaf in a tornado.  Luckily my husband had seen her and wound down the window in anticipation, so she did not have to bang on the glass with her fist. “ They’ve gone, they’ve gone!”, she bellowed.  “It is the end of an era!  It is not just them, it’s the end of an era.  Our mothers were friends, they knew each other, who is left to remember my mother now?  We left these apartments as Brides, both of us, and returned as wives. It’s a piece of our history that has gone.  That bastard that kicked them out, he’s a criminal without a heart!  It’s a piece of our shared history that has gone!”  I didn’t get the rest as she subsided into tears leaning on our car door.

They call Rome ‘The Eternal City’.  It refers to the fact that it is timeless, changeless, always there.  It has indeed, in many ways, resisted much of the change that has occurred in other post industrial, European capital cities.  Maybe that’s why when it comes, it is such a shock, and so hard to adjust to.  It seems that when things change in the Eternal City, they do so in a big way.

Available at all bookstores nationally within Australia, FAO and Lion Bookstore Rome, and via Amazon, Kobo and ibooks.

http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Daze-Bronte-Dee-Jackson/dp/192212933X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389659611&sr=8-1&keywords=roman+daze

https://www.amazon.com/author/brontejackson

Click here for a free download of the Prologue and first chapter.

https://brontejackson.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/roman-daze-la-dolce-vita-for-all-seasons.pdf

Reviews

A beautifully scenic account of one woman’s life-long love affair with Italy. Peppered with stunning imagery and interesting cultural insights, Jackson presents the country’s quirks and eccentricities with the fondness of a local. She takes your hand as she walks the streets of Rome, infects you with her passion for the city and its surrounds, and guides you to all its hidden treasures.

Independent Publishers Australian competition 2012 (IP Picks) http://ipoz.biz/News/eNews53.htm. Best Creative Non-Fiction: 1st Commended, Bronte Dee Jackson (VIC), Roman Daze

Rome, the eternal city, presents a princely setting for this cultural enquiry …. how do people live here? Bronte Jackson’s journey is one of personal discovery … a perceptive narrative about friendships found; where street markets assume seasonal differences in pasta, wines, and storytelling amongst the neighbours.

Daryl Jackson, Author, Daryl Jackson Architecture: Short Essays

Much travel writing is by experienced journalists based on quick impressions on sponsored trips. Roman Daze is the account of a 17-year love affair with a city. Written in a deceptively easy prose style, it is recommended to both first-time and regular visitors to the Eternal City.

Professor Geoff Burrows, Editor, Insights: Melbourne Business and Economics

Eat, Love, Eat – Hold the Praying! Roman Daze is a wonderful read for anyone interested in food, culture, people, travel, Italy – and especially food! The author has an exquisite ability to describe places, people, and meals so that they come to life.

Liliane Grace, Author, The Mastery Club and The Hidden Order

The best things in Rome………..are free!

The title of this blog was supposed to be ‘ Top Three Spas in Rome‘ (watch this space for a later blog), but while doing research for that blog post I became outraged about the amount of ‘best things to do in Rome‘ articles requiring the spending of zillions of $$$. They included things like breakfasting on hotel rooftops and banqueting with 250 of your closest friends inside the Vatican palace ‘so you can experience the splendour that only Popes and royalty do/did’, while casually mentioning ‘you might like to also take in a few piazzas, the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon if you have time’. So I decided to change the topic of my blog.  I am passionate about my adopted city  because it is one of the most visually beautiful cities in the world, full of art and colour and life, it also is one of the most historically and culturally interesting.  And most of all I love the fact that nearly all of this can be experienced for free!  Yes folks it’s true, the best things in Rome are free!

 

It is therefore a backpackers and budget travellers delight.  However probably because a lot of it is free, it seems that the Eternal city sometimes thinks its needs to embellish itself and add costly delights for travellers who don’t feel they are special if they don’t have to pay lots of money for something.  One of the things I love the most about Rome is that I can be minding my own business sitting around at the Trevi Fountain when right before my eyes Isabella Rossellini hops out of a taxi.  Or that I can be waiting for a table (not queuing, there is a big difference) at a well-known restaurant in Campo dei Fiori and ahead of me in the not-queue is Harvey Keitel.  Or that I can walk into Prada or Dolce & Gabbana or Versace on the Via dei Condotti and be treated like I, in my wildest dreams (and theirs), would be able to afford anything.  You could also find yourself out for drinks with any one of Italy’s international movie stars or politicians who frequent the vibrant aperitivo (pre-dinner drinks that often substitute dinner) scene in Rome’s tiny back streets.

Rome is a great leveller.  Its streets and piazzas are open to everyone, always. It’s accessible a lot only by foot and so this makes it hard to create VIP experiences as opposed to public experiences. Rome is unequivocal, it can’t be cordoned off because Brangelina are visiting. Movie stars, models, zillionaires, dictators, mafia bosses, Prime Ministers mingle with the unknown, every-day tourist, back packer and refugee.

Every year on my birthday (since I stopped being a backpacker and could afford to eat properly), I used to choose one of the fancy restaurants advertised in tourist magazines as being ‘the best restaurants’ to eat in.  The kind where you spend your weekly and sometimes monthly wage on dinner.  Year after year, hoping for an amazing experience, I was disappointed.  The food was always average, the service pompous (one year my husband and I had to sit near the toilets because he wasn’t wearing a tie – just a suit) and we mostly ended up stopping on the way home at one of our usuals to calm ourselves down with a real bowl of pasta and some local wine.  My point being that in Rome the best restaurants are always frequented by average Romans, even the very wealthy ones.

So when in Rome don’t spend your money on rooftop breakfasts in hotels or dinning in the Vatican museum with 250 0f your closest friends or in a fake Roman spa being pampered by Eastern Europeans or on ‘private’ tours (where in the end you will have to queue up and approach things on foot with everyone else anyway).  Here’s my tip for a fabulous Roman Day out and, apart from the inexpensive meals, it is all FREE!!!

Begin at the nearest bar (cafe) to your hotel.  There should be one within 100 metres.  Order a cappuccino or a ‘cafe’ and a cornetto, possibly with an orange juice if you want to be healthy.  You will find the coffee is the best you have ever had, the cornetto (Italian croissant) will be light, and made that morning, the juice will be juiced in front of you and you will pay about the same amount altogether as the cost of one cup of coffee on a rooftop.

Then take your free map (get them at the airport, McDonalds or from your hotel).  Hopefully you have done some slight research (free on the internet) or have a cheap guide book.  Otherwise scroll through this blog to get to the ‘Top ten things to do in Rome‘, ‘Top ten places to eat in Rome’ etc. articles. If you are staying anywhere in the city of Rome (centro) everything will be in walking distance with plenty of opportunities to sit down, grab more coffee or juice, fill up your water bottle free at a fountain or just rest.  Start at one end of town and make your way down and then left and right as you please.  Take one to five days depending on your itinerary and energy levels and repeat in the evenings for a different view.  You can start anywhere but I have you starting at Piazza del Popolo.

Marvel at the huge space in such a crowded city, cast your eyes up to the lush green gardens of the Villa Borghese on one side, and put it aside for another day.  Feast your eyes on the fountain in the centre of the Piazza, the churches all around it (one of which contains a Caravaggio) and the Egyptian obelisk (stolen by the Romans from Egypt).  Walk out of the Piazza and down the Via del Babuino and admire the antique shops (stop at Hotel de Russie if you want a spa – next blog).  Be entranced by your next view at the end of Via del Babuino which will be Piazza di Spagna.  Sit awhile on the staircase and admire the beautiful people and the view of Via dei Condotti, Rome‘s premium shopping strip.  Don’t forget to look in the window at Dolce & Gabbana half way down the Via Condotti, one of the best visual feasts outside a museum that you will see.

At the end of Via Condotti you will arrive at the Via del Corso. Turn left and head towards the ‘wedding cake’ Victor Emmanuel Monument at the end of the street.  Admire the palaces and beautiful baroque buildings that line either side of this main street of Rome.  Shortly after you pass the houses of Parliament on your right, turn down a pedestrian side street on your left full of market stalls.  Follow it on to the end.  Gasp.  Get pushed in the back by other tourists behind you who don’t know why you have stopped.  Yes folks this is the Trevi Fountain, at the cross roads of three streets or ‘tre vie’.  All the more beautiful because it is contained in such a small space, wangle your way to the front and admire it sitting down for as long as you can.

Walk back the way you came and cross back over Via del Corso to another pedestrian street full of restaurants.  Meander along the path following everyone else until you get to the Pantheon, another breathtaking moment but within a larger piazza.  Sit on the steps of the fountain in the piazza and take it all in before you head inside (for free) and view the perfectly round, 2000 year old temple, with a hole cut out in the middle of the roof that lets the sun in to highlight different sculptures around the room as the sun moves overhead.  How’s that for antique engineering??  Using your map move your way left (with the Pantheon to your back) towards Piazza Navona.

Now at this stage if you really have had enough of Roman culture and need to recover, you could eat at the McDonalds which faces the Pantheon (and serves beer), therefore having a drink/burger with one of the world’s best views at about 100th of the cost of sitting at any of the other cafes that also surround the Pantheon.  I am only recommending this on the grounds of it being cheap and acknowledging that sometimes people need a break from antiquity (based on the experience of some of guests over the years).  Otherwise I would suggest pushing on and eating a slice of pizza, also for the same price as a burger, at one of the places around Campo dei Fiori, a bit further along in our walk.

As you spill out into Piazza Navona and take a stroll around its race track type shape (yes it was originally a chariot racing track), admire the artists who display their wares and the magnificent fountain of four rivers in the middle.  At one end (on the other side of the toy shop) you can see the original entrance to the race track in Roman times, below street level.  Exit the piazza at the other end and cross Corso Vittorio Emanuele into cobblestoned streets that sell great pizza by the slice, and where you can sit down and eat for around the same price as McDonalds.  Take the opportunity here to have an ice-cream in the same area.  Campo dei Fiori will open up in front of you.  Stroll around the square, take in the history of this being the last place that the Vatican burnt someone at the stake for daring to state that possibly the earth rotated around the sun rather than the other way around……

If you follow most of the traffic going out of the piazza in the opposite direction from where you came in, you will eventually hit a street going off to your right which becomes a foot bridge over the river.  If you follow it you will find yourself in Trastevere, the oldest neighbourhood of post medieval Rome and home to its vibrant restaurant and nightlife.  Have an aperitivo, at any of the little bars (cafes) that line its tiny cobbled streets, standing up of course which will cost you a fraction of what it costs to sit down, enjoy the free bar snacks and choose your inexpensive restaurant to eat at for dinner!

After dinner take a stroll along the river, meander throughout the Trastevere neighbourhood or go back the way you came for a completely different view of Rome.  We haven’t even touched the free St. Peters or Roman Forum or the many parks and gardens that are just waiting to be explored!  During your walk, or the next day, lose yourself in any one of the streets off this main beat. Sit and watch the local Roman traffic go by from a street cafe. Admire the marble columns, statues and painted plaques that adorn most buildings. Freely feast on the art inside most churches, and regularly look up to enjoy the free natural beauty of the skyline with its domes, starlings and magnificent sun sets. Now that’s something for free that’s worth paying for!

The Italian Pantry: How to Italianise a corner of your kitchen

Happy New Year to everyone!!

As I am now on my Christmas holidays I am borrowing from another fantastic blog from Italy Magazine for this month.  Happy holidays and Christmas season to all.  Will be back blogging soon!

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After spending a year in Italy studying its cuisine, in 1954 Elizabeth David wrote what is still considered one of the most comprehensive, if not the first English book about Italian cookery. This seminal work is called simply, “Italian Food”. The book has been reprinted over the years and still sells many copies in the United Kingdom – a testament to the great research and writing of the author.

If you are a fan of Italian food and enjoy preparing it at home, Elizabeth David stresses the importance of keeping an Italian larder – or pantry, for our American friends! Another bastion of Italian cooking is the talented Antonio Carluccio, who himself in his book, “Simple Cooking”, said, ‘In your larder keep a little of everything you think you will need for making the dishes you like to cook and eat.’

So let’s take a look at what is required for the essential Italian larder:

Pasta

Keep at least three types of pasta in your store cupboard, a ridged one like penne or rigatoni for thick and meat based sauces, a thin ribbon such as linguini for thinner and seafood sauces, and a small one such as stelline or corallini for adding to soups and broths.

Rice and Grains

Let’s not forget that even rice is part of the Italian culinary traditon from North to South. Buy some Carnaroli rice for the perfect risotto or Sicilian arancini or farro for a traditional Tuscan winter soup.

Extravirgin Olive Oil

It goes without saying that every Italian pantry has olive oil …and yes it must be extra virgin Olive oil!

 

Herbs and Spices

The Italian pantry would be almost empty without this important section and, although keeping fresh herbs all year round such as basil can be tricky, there’s no reason why you can’t grow your own and store the leaves in the freezer, as freshly frozen basil is superior to dried; however, do find space for a jar of dried oregano. Rosemary and sage can be harvested all year round, so consider a plant in the garden border or on the patio in a pot. Capers and chillies, fresh or dried, along with salt and black pepper complete the herbs and spice section.

Onions and Garlic

They are the mainstay of many Italian dishes and onions, whether white, yellow or red, are the unwavering base of most sauces. Garlic peeled and chopped or rubbed over toasted bread has that incomparable taste that conjures up memories of a rustic Italian osteria.

Beans – Tomatoes – Tuna – Anchovies 

A can of chopped tomatoes makes a simple pasta sauce in a hurry if you add a few herbs and some chopped pancetta; a can of either cannellini or borlotti beans are great for adding to soups and salads. Tuna and anchovies in olive oil are great in pasta sauces or salads.

 

 

Breadcrumbs

They are used in many Italian dishes for making cozze ripiene (stuffed mussels) or for coating a hammered veal cutlet or chicken breast. Instead of buying them, why not make your own in the food processor!

Wine Vinegar

Vinegar is handy for adding piquancy to sauces and to store vegetable antipasti.

Luxury items like balsamic vinegar and truffles are also a great addition to the perfect Italian pantry, however, if your budget won’t stretch to dried porcini mushrooms, a pre-packed mix with field mushrooms is perfectly acceptable.

There is one item of the Italian larder that you should make a considered purchase: Parmesan cheese. Always buy the best quality that you can afford; I prefer one that’s aged for at least two years, it will keep for months in the fridge and is well worth the investment.

Once you have Italianised a small corner of the kitchen, you’ll be ready to start cooking great dishes, just like Nonna.

– See more at: http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/italian-pantry-how-italianise-corner-your-kitchen?utm_source=ITALY+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d36ce3753d-ITALY+Newsletter+-+December+5th+2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7e828ebed3-d36ce3753d-402225#sthash.xQtaz8oI.dpuf

Top 10 things to eat in Rome!

As promised nos. 6 – 10 plus another one for dessert!  For context please read the intro to my last blog as this sets the scene for the precious food tips I am about to give.  All of these dishes can be found on the menus of the ‘Top 10 restarurants in Rome’ blog dated March, 2012.

6.  Saltimbocca alla Romana.  Veal done Roman style (literally means – jump in your mouth style).  There is a theme here……each of these dishes are called ‘alla Romana’ because of the fact that the dishes originated in Rome and are mostly not found outside of Rome.  Another reason to eat regionally and where ever you are, if you see something on the menu that ends in ‘alla the name of the place you are in’ then order it!

Saltimbocca alla Romana are thin, soft slices of veal sauteed lightly in olive oil and flavoured with proscuitto and sage leaves.  Any veal in Rome is divine and no matter how many times other countries’ butchers and restaurantuers tell me they have thinly sliced, soft veal, I’ve never tasted anything remotely like it outside of Italy.  The salty prosciutto and the strong pungent flavour of the sage work perfectly to bring out the subtle taste of the veal.  Highly recommened.

7. Pollo all Romana.  Baked chicken Roman style.  This is a simple and humble dish and very traditional.  The flavours are amazing, subtle and sweet.  It is basically cuts of chicken (not breast) that have stewed most of the day with a variety of peppers (capsicums) of all colours, some wine, garlic, herbs and tomatoes and produces tender, fall off the bone meat surrounded in delicately flavoured juices that require Italian bread to soak them up.  If you like chicken or need some protein it is highly recommended.

8. Fegato alla Romana.  Liver Roman style.  OK I admit I am a liver lover, even the shoe-leather type liver I grew up eating, so this liver dish is a real treat and I have often converted non-liver lovers to it.  The liver is very thin and delicate, and is fried using a bushel of white onions and olive oil so that it tastes almost sweet.  It is like eating a deconstructed pate.  Romans have been cooking offal for centuries and they have it down pat!

9. Carciofe alla Romana.  Artichokes Roman style.  Vegetables are served as separate dishes in Italy and are not included as part of the main dish. They are worthwhile ordering just on their own though, perfect as a simple starter or instead of the main dish.  Carciofe alla Romana are artichokes cooked in Roman mint and garlic.  Roman mint can be found in any park or nature strip in Rome.  Just walking on a park or naturestrip disturbs the scent and you can then identify it.  It is different to other strains of mint and tastes a little sweeter and subtle than other varieties.  I am just intrigued by the fact i can have a local vegetable cooked in a local herb.  It is cooked by boiling it with the ingredients mentioned before and comes to the plate hot, soft and wet and flavoured with the squeeze of a lemon and some olive oil.  They are fantastic with a basket of bread as a light lunch with a cool glass of local Frascati white wine – yum!

10. Puntarelle.  Little points (aka translation is useless just trust me).  This vegetable dish contains a riot of small green things that look and taste a little like celery, but come in the shape of a small squid or octopus (the ends are all curled up).  They are served with olive oil and flavoured with a few anchovies, vinegar and garlic.  They are fresh, tangy and divine to eat.  They are found only in Rome, in autumn, and are the ends of a vegetable that no one, not even a large amount of Romans I asked, knows the name of.  They are notoriously difficult to prepare and are therefore best eaten at a restaurant where someone else has had to chop, scrape, soak, slice, and marinate them.

11. Torta della  Nonna.  Nana’s/Grandma’s cake.  This is essentially a custard tart topped with pine nuts and is found in every cafe and restaurant in Rome.  It is light and delicately flavoured with just a hint of lemon.  The pine nuts give it a crunchy texture and add taste.  If you really want to understand and appreciate the flavour of the pine nut I highly recommend the pinoli gelato, pine nut gelato, also found prolifically in Rome.

I have now made myself so unbelievably hungry it is time to go!  Next week more about Francesca and less about food as we all give ourselves time to digest!

I will throw out a challenge though.  How many of you can make all of these dishes before my next blog?  Reports and photos required.  All recipes are found easily, and in English, by googling the names of them.  Buon appetito a tutti i miei amici.

 

Top 10 things to eat in Rome!

I thought i would make this post a little lighter than the last one and focus on the one thing that brings joy to every heart, and travellor, in Italy – the food!!!

Residents of Italy, as opposed to travellors, will understand the importance of the title not being “Top 10 things to eat in Italy”.  This is because, as I have mentioned before, Italy is a country of REGIONS, and towns, and none more so obviously than when it comes to food.

When I first arrived in Rome, after several months of eating what I called Italian food, I was longing for a change and enquired of my Italian friends if we could go to a different type of restaurant and eat another type of food. “Oh sure”, they answered, “we will arrange it.  Plenty of variety here in Rome.  We could go to a great Abruzzi restaurant we know, or the Sardinian restaurant on the corner is good, and there is an amazing Tuscan place in town and a new Sicilian place opening up.”  Not quite what i had in mind but a good demonstration of how different the food is between regions.  And  not just regions.  If you are wanting variety it is often enough just to drive an hour up the freeway to the next little town, and the food will be different with unique dishes and ways of preparing salads, pastas, desserts etc.

Often dishes that you can get in one part of Italy are unavailable in others.  So it would be a shame to focus on general “Italian” dishes at the expense of the local cuisine and that way you can taste your way around Italy knowing that the variety will be significant.

For example it took me about seven years to work out why I couldn’t find Spaghetti Bolognaise on the menu in Rome.  I attributed this fact to it possibly being an Anglo-Saxon made-up Italian dish, like garlic bread that is not available ANYWHWERE in Italy.  Until I took a holiday to Bologna.  Then I found it on every menu.  Rome of course has its own version, but it is made with pork meat not beef and is called Spaghetti con Ragu.  If you want Spaghetti  Bolognaise when you are in Italy you need to go to Bologna.

Therefore this post will focus on the top 10 dishes to eat in Rome primarily because they are mostly only available in Rome and represent some of its best cuisine.  They are not the type of dishes that the average Italian home cook would make as they are quite tricky or have special ingredients.  They are the type of dishes that Italians go out to eat.  All the restaurants featured in my post ‘Top 10 Restaurants’ will have these dishes available.  I have written the dishes in the order of how they will appear in the menu and in the order you are supposed to eat them.

There were so many yummy savoury dishes that I ran out of numbers before I got to dessert so I have cheated and included a number 11.  Also you may have heard me comment previously that Roman desserts are not prolific or spectacular.  Especially when you compare them to the ice-cream desserts of Calabria, Sicily and Puglia or the creamy custards of Tuscany and Umbria.  Also Romans have available at all times spectacular ice-cream which is not only a dessert but a daily medicinal requirement, and recommended to all travellors at all times, and they have adopted the Tiramisu (probably the most like a ‘national’ dessert that Italy has) with avengence, so no need to suffer a dessert desert when you are in Rome, but not alot of desserts that you can only have in Rome.  The one I have included is the only one unique to Rome unless you count Chestnut honey which the Ancient Romans used prolifically as a dessert and which I also recommend you try.

Just one other thing then.  Roman cooking is characterised by two things – its simplicity and its focus on offal (which i have reccomended only in one dish but should be tried in its various forms if you have the stomach for stomach…..).  This is because of its history of being a Papal city, one of the most signficant.  Traditionally most of the best cuts of meat and produce went to the Vatican, and the local food producers of Rome had a prolific amount of Priests and nobles connected with the Vatican who they could provide food for.  It meant that the local citizens were left with the lesser cuts of meat.  The general poverty of the food producers and other city dwellers meant that simple, local, ingredients, along with offal was what made up their cuisine.  Like many culinary traditions, the food of the poor became adopted by the rich and now its quality and custom is entrenched in the average modern Roman diet.

Here are the first five, next five, next week.

1.  Fiori di Zucca.  Stuffed zucchini flowers.  These are spectacular and not to be missed and to be eaten at every opportunity possible.  Many of my ‘regret’ moments are about the fact that I did not eat enough Fiori di Zucca when I had the chance.  They are also not to attempted at home.  I tried it once and have had much empathy with my gynachologist ever since.  It is almost impossible to open up the delicate petals enough without splitting them to get in the ingredients you need to get in there to qualify them as stuffed, and it takes ages.  These beauties usually come two or three to a dish and are small and light.  They consist of the end of the zucchini, the flower, stuffed with golden, melting mozarella and a sharp tasting anchovy (just enough to flavour it), dipped in a light batter and quickly deep fried.  Have I mentioned they are divine?

2.  Olive ascolane.  Stuffed olives.  Much more robust than the Fiori di Zucca they are green olives stuffed with pork mince, covered in breadcrumbs and deep fried.  They are like little mouthfuls of intensely flavoursome and chewy peices of heaven if you like olives and pork.  They usually come 8 -10 to a plate.

3. Spaghetti Carbonara.  No translation available.  This dish is not to be missed and comes after the antipasti dishes mentioned above.  It is usally served as a spaghetti but can also be served using penne or rigatoni as the pasta.  If you have ever eaten what you think is a Spaghetti Carbonara outside of Italy, you will be quite surprised, and then very angry with the previous person who cooked you Spaghetti Carbonara.  This is a thick, rich and highly filling dish.  It is the Italian version of bacon and eggs and therefore can be eaten as early in the day as you want and is recommended as a great hangover cure.  It is simply eggs cooked together with so much parmesan cheese (Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano) it is scary, until a cream develops.  It is then thrown together with some small pieces of  pigs cheek or pigs stomach (guanciale or pancetta) lightly fried in their own fat and then mixed with the pasta.  More parmesan and a splash of pepper usally accompany it.  Under no circumstances is cream used.   Talking and fast movement may need to cease for some time after this dish has been eaten.

4. Amatriciana.  Same.  This is a pasta dish which can be served using Spaghetti, Penne, Rigatoni or Bucatini.  The pasta sauces is made from tomatoes, pigs cheek (guanciale), a pinch of chilli and Pecorino (sheep’s) cheese.  It is salty, flavoursome, and makes you feel like you could run a marathon afterwards.  It is my hands down favourite food in all of Rome.

5. Spaghetti Caccio Peppe.  Spaghetti with Sheep’s cheese and Pepper.  And lastly for today we come to another Roman favourite.  It is so simple and sounds so foreign that many people shy away from it but it is also not to be missed and one day long into the future you will remember how good this dish tasted.  It is served only with Spaghetti and it comes with a mountain of fresh sheep’s cheese (Pecorino) finely grated on top of it and dusted with a thick layer of black, cracked pepper.  Your job is to mix it all in until the cheese melts and then just eat it.  Talking will not be possible during the eating of this dish and it is fun to watch the face of the person eating this dish as the unlikely yumminess hits them again and again.

 

If you enjoyed this post and want to read more about Roman and Italian food and food stories, my book ‘Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all Seasons‘, will have you longing for pasta and searching for an Italian/Roman food fix!  Available at your local bookstore (in Australia) or from

http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Daze-Bronte-Dee-Jackson/dp/192212933X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389659611&sr=8-1&keywords=roman+daze

Stay tuned for the final top 5 things to eat in Rome!

 

 

 

Book Launch: Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all seasons!

Its finally happened folks!  My book, Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all seasons was launched last week to great acclaim!  In fact we sold out!

Go here to get more!

http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Daze-Bronte-Dee-Jackson/dp/192212933X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386736705&sr=8-1&keywords=roman+daze

or any major e-platform booksellers (google, kobo, ibooks).  It is available as a hard copy or electronic.

Early reviews describe it as “conjuring up people and place in a masterful way and having the effect of making you want to eat pasta and book a trip to italy” and

“The book is a quirky and perceptive cultural set of observations, and decoding of the phenomena, that is Rome and her beautiful people. Brava Bronte”

 

 

La Dolce Vita for all seasons

This post is to announce the publication of my book “Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all seasons”!!!!  I am very excited.

What is it about I hear you ask?  Well………….Twenty years ago, Bronté Jackson won an airline ticket that thrust her into the heart of the Mediterranean. Recently separated, made redundant and evicted from her home, Bronté spent six months recovering in Greece and spending her redundancy package, before making her way to Rome. Roman Daze: La Dolce Vita for All Seasons is a book about living a personal and continuously surprising adventure. It’s about following your heart and what it’s like to live among people who continuously use theirs.

In Roman Daze, Bronté Jackson describes how the seasons, food, family, landscape, rituals and history combine to create and explain the Italian lifestyle and why, from the outside, it looks like La Dolce Vita.

“It took only three days to fall in love with Rome. Like all infatuations, I expected it to wear off. I decided that I would leave when I no longer noticed the Coliseum. I am still waiting.”

From December 10, 2013 it will be available on all major e-platforms as an e-book and hard copy (print on demand). I will provide the links as soon as I have them. Many of you will relate to the stories and lifestyle description in this book (and some of you are in it! – you know who you are;).

If you enjoy the book, please write a review of it and recommend it to your friends. More information on the book is on the page in this Blog “Roman Daze – La Dolce Vita for all seasons.

How to enjoy a Roman Autumn (Fall)

Autumn is a great season to visit Rome in because the city is fresh, crisp and relaxed.  The weather is a perfect and steady 24 degrees with sunny, blue skies.  The blistering heat has finished, the colder months have not yet started, and the rain of spring is far away.  Romans have returned from their summer holiday months and are tanned, cool and refreshed; ready for work, and if that includes the tourist trade then the service is much better than you would get in the baking hot and crowded summer months.  There are also fewer tourists as most of the Northern hemisphere has taken their holidays and have returned to work.  Airline tickets cost less; everything is open, and the city is back to business.

Here are my top ten tips for how to enjoy a Roman Fall/Autumn.

1.  Plan to walk a lot.

Autumn is perfect for walking (as is the city of Rome).  It rarely rains, is not too hot, and the sunshine and blue skies set off the rich colours of the city and its monuments perfectly.

2.  Visit a park (Villa Borghese, Villa Ada, Villa Pamphili)

Sunshine will filter in through the green foliage of the summer growth making any park seem cool, lush and shady.  But there will also be evidence of the season, with colours changing to yellows and browns and crunchy leaves underfoot. Tracks will be dry and easy to walk on, summer mosquitos will have gone and the air still warm and balmy.  A Park is the perfect accessory for autumn.

3.  Visit the Municipal Rose Gardens of Rome.

Internationally acclaimed and featuring over 1,000 varieties of roses they are still blooming ferociously in autumn.  Although not publically listed as open in autumn (they are only open officially for a few weeks in May and June), I was walking past the other day and they were definitely open and being visited.

4. Don’t go to the beach.

As tempting as it maybe for some of you from colder climes who don’t get much opportunity to go,  the beach will generally be shut in autumn in Rome.  Romans are seasonal creatures and will finish going to the beach at the end of summer (21st September), no matter what the temperature.  Most beaches are privately run and are fenced in and will be closed due to lack of clientele.

5. Don’t look as though you are going to the beach.

Likewise if you are still wearing shorts and sandals in autumn it will be noticed.  My summer clothes were noted and commented on a few weeks ago in my neighbourhood in an unfavourable manner by a fellow customer at my local café.  There is a season for everything in respectable Roman society, and in September to December it is autumn, and the attire that represents that (closed shoes, longer trousers, jeans, layers, light cardigans, cotton scarves, etc.).

6. Shop for last season’s cloths.

Many shops, though not in the trendiest parts of town, will still have remnants of their summer stock, from cloths to bags.  As no self-respecting Roman would be seen dead in the colours, fabrics, or shoes of summer, the prices are rock-bottom and on offer to the tourists who are the only people that will buy them.  Stock up!  Rome’s last seasons’ stuff is what the rest of the world will be wearing in a years’ time.

7.  Eat seasonal delicacies – Funghi Porcini, Puntarelle, Carciofi alla Romana, Roasted Chestnuts.

Funghi Porcini are large flat mushrooms that taste earthy, nutty and quite unique. They are one of my favourite things to eat, made all the more special by the fact they are available for only a few months of the year.  I recommend eating them grilled and as a stand-alone dish. They don’t require any other accompaniment than bread and the fresh green olive oil, parsley and garlic they will be cooked with.  Most people are hooked after one taste.  If you are a bit shy and need to dilute your first experience then I recommend ordering the Tagliatelle ai Funghi Porcini, a thick egg noodle/pasta delicately flavoured with fine slices of Funghi Porcini.

Puntarelle (little points) is a vegetable dish.  They look and taste a little like celery but come in the shape of a small squid or octopus (the ends are all curled up).  They are served with olive oil and flavoured with a few anchovies, vinegar and garlic.  They are fresh, tangy and divine to eat.  They are found only in Rome, in autumn, and are the ends of a vegetable that no one, not even a large amount of Romans I asked, knows the name of.  They are notoriously difficult to prepare and are therefore best eaten at a restaurant where someone else has had to chop, scrape, soak, slice, and marinate them.

Carciofi, artichokes are a Roman speciality in general but prepared alla Romana is even more typically Roman.  Again it is ordered as a vegetable dish and will come as a single, large artichoke soaking in its own cooking juices of lemon, mint, garlic, parsley and boiling water and garnished with olive oil.  It is magnificent!

Roasted chestnuts will be available on every street corner in the centre of the city.  Roasted over a coal fire you can buy them in small paper scoopfuls.  They are warm, nutritious, richly filling and slightly sweet.  They make a perfect snack or an excellent (and very cheap) breakfast along with a coffee.

8. Sit in the sun.

It is one of the best recreational activities of the year.  Winter it is too cold to sit still outside, summer it is too hot to sit in the sun, spring is unpredictable.  Autumn has long, lovely, warm days full of a sunshine that caresses without burning, stimulates and sooths, tans and smooths, gently washing away negative and stressful thoughts.

9. Watch the sun set.

The sunsets of autumn fill the sky with brilliant reds, oranges and yellows that blot out clouds and pollution and linger on for hours.  It is as though the sun needs to go out with a bang in its last season of dominance; that it needs to remind us all of its majesty so that we don’t forget its importance and power as we live through the winter months.

10. Go to a Vineria.

If Parks are the perfect accessory for autumn and sun sitting the perfect recreational activity then the Vineria is the perfect resting place.  The evenings that darken early, and the slight chill in the air when they do, force you inside at a time usually too early to eat but perfect for the partaking of a little wine, cheese and salami – the trifecta of the Vineria.   Vinerie serve only that (although some can also entice you with dinner once you have settled in), and from around early evening (just before sunset).  They specialise in an exhaustive range of wines and usually have shelves of bottles that line the walls from floor to ceiling as part of their decor.  Cheeses and salamis will be offered that match the wine you choose, and the small, cosy and intimate nature of these establishments will make you glad that you chose your sojourn to Rome to correspond with the magnificent season of autumn!