Passeggiata - Buon Domenica with Pizza Bianco

Italy has a strong culture of famiglia and comes a Buon Domenica dawning crystal blue skies and mild weather and people take to the streets together as a family for a long walk and a hearty meal. The ritual of a Sunday Passeggiata.

Today was one of those days.  Our first real Buon Domenica in Roma. We started out with our usual caffee at Bar Gianicolo next to the Pancrazio monument and I made a major switch.  Cappuccino instead of a fast blast of caffee expresso. I wanted time to sip and enjoy, not just to pour raw,  unfiltered life into my bloodstream.  I also had un cornetto con marmalade instead of a la bombe con crema de limone.  It is our one week to the day anniversary of finding ourselves in Roma and it was time to mix things up.

I never get tired of this view with my caffee.  :30 seconds from the house.

Our destination and programma for the day was the large flea market in the piazza Porta Portese next to the Ponte Testaccio.  It's a Sunday only flea market and hugely popular. 

Yes it was. Not at all what we were expecting though. We envisioned stalls and stands of artisan goods and well, flea market art items spread out over a large piazza near the river.  What we found was a seemingly endless narrow street flanked by stall after stall of identical knock-off clothes, shoes, gee-gaws, phone crud, hats, and touristy shirts. And it went on for well over a mile, packed with people shoulder to shoulder, lumbering stolidly onward making passage for our dogs problematic. To the poor chihuahuas, it was a nightmare forest of feet and legs they had to continually dodge to avoid being kicked or crushed. And it went on seemingly forever.  Milton was near panic by the time we broke free of the lane and cut east to the River. 

What a reward. The Tiber between The Trastevere and Testaccio is calm and bucolic as a late 19th-century oil painting.  Just what we all needed to calm down.

From the Ponte looking north with Testaccio on the right.

From the banks of the Trastevere side of the river


We then backtracked north on the Testaccio side of the river sharing the lovely mile-long passeggiata with other famiglie (dressed far more elegante and moda than us),  joggers, dog walkers.  Milty and Bisou made many friends, human and fellow cane, along the way. It was as pleasant a Sunday walk as could be imaged.

Our destination was a trattoria called Bucatini in the heart of the Testaccio.  This was our first disappointment. And we learned a valuable lesson today:  Never, ever on a sunny as Hell perfect Sunday try to enter a good ristorante senza pronotazione.  "Sorry, we're full up. You need to call first."  No amount of begging could get us in. This happened again at our backup, plan B ristorante.

Hungry and tired after our miles and miles of hiking, we just headed back to the more populated streets and spun the food dice, looking for anything that was open and had seats. We only passed on one place that looked nice but had lots of empty tables. A sushi joint.  Sorry, I didn't travel 7k miles to eat sushi, though it did look kinda elegant and had a good cocktail menu.

As luck would have it we found a place which had A. some lovely tables free outside looking across at the old Roman city wall and a green, forested hillside, and  B,  pizza bianco. I've been hearing and reading about his very Roman style of pizza/street food for a while and oby-howdy did it meet expectations.  Thin crust had a similar crumb to a super hydrated loaf of ciabatta. it was filed with formaggio of course and had a toasty, crackling flavor and texture.

This just flat out beats any and all pizza I've ever had.  This is now my go-to pizza and if I ever decide to come home from Italy, I will learn to make it myself. If I stay here for good, I'll just buy a slice for lunch every day until I die. Happily, I might add.

Roll with the punches, I say. The Fates know exactly what they're doing. They fully meant for me to not eat more excellent pasta today. They required me to find pizza bianca.  I absolutely trust them with these sorts of decisions.

Buon Domenica e al presto!

Rainy Day, Museo Day

Rainy days happen. Especially as Autumn is inching its way toward Winter. We're getting our share of murky days so far but it's not all bad. A torn-paper cloudy sky can be beyond beautiful.  And the clean smell of Gianicolo Hill is amazing after a brisk rain.

But there are pros and cons.

+ The aforementioned interesting skies and fresh smells of Rome.

- Walking up the Trastevere scala onto Gianicolo Hill with bags of groceries in a downpour.

+ The coziness of a small Trattoria.

- Crossing a street at night in the low visibility of a mist/rain and drivers that see you as an intruder on their space.

+ little to no Turistas when the temps drop into the 60's and it gets wet outside.

- Getting drenched by a Fiat purposely aiming at the puddle you're standing next to patiently while waiting to cross the street (yes, it really happened, just like in an old Cary Grant movie).

+++ Museo days!!


Yesterday was forecast for rain pretty much all day, so we headed across the river to Piazza Venezia and the Musei Capitalini.


The Capitaline museum is the oldest public museum in the world and hosts some just stunning works of ancient art with two whole floors of sculpture -  which is absolutely my favorite thing.  We happily spent most of our day wandering and gawking and being amazed.

You approach it by walking up a steep incline to a central courtyard and being greeted by Marcus Aurelius  (a copy, the real one is inside).















We found our way into the main museum floors on the right after getting a bit of the stink eye from the ticketing person because my still somewhat lame Italiano was not able to parse her rapid-fire mumbling from behind a plexiglass partition.  My one and only encounter with a French attitude toward language in Italy. She must have been having a rough day, cause if that's her usual demeanor, customer service is the wrong profession for her.


The inner courtyard and the remains of a 60' colossus sculpture of Constantin the Great.

All that is left is the head, part of his right arm, his left knee and both his feet. 

The first floor opens into a room with a ginormous painting completely covering one huge wall,  depicting epic battles and as we found out, was the actual room where the original EU agreement was signed in 1957. They likely choose the room for A. it's size, and B. the battle painting to remind them of why the EU and cooperation were necessary and a good thing.

These pictures don't entirely evoke the scale of an 18' by 50' mural. Use your imagination.

The inner courtyard - 

Battle armor

 

A chariot - magistrate, not battle

Mor Constantine fragementi

Marcus Aurelius - original

Sarcophagus 

Looks just like my neighbor, Dean.

Romans love their dogs

The Forums from the rooftop

Temple of Saturn

Herc! Tanned rested and ready for labors.

Mars

Theatrical mask, 3rd century AD

Oceanus in ripose

Pan, ready to party

 where it all began

All in all a great day to be inside and with some lingering sprinkles cabbed our way home and cooked some pasta fresca with anchovies, fennel, red onions and rosemary for a late lunch.  Such a huge difference in being able to get fresh made pasta rather than the old and over dried plastic crud that passes for pasta in the States. That and the super fresh veggies and aromatics make never going home again an enticing option. 

But having cooked for ourselves for lunch we felt like going out and around 8:30 ventured out into the damp streets for a lovely walk into Monte Verde and a ristorante named Focolare.

This was a dreamlike dining experience; not the level of culinary brilliance of last weekend at Antica Arch - which will live in memory for as long as my brain has electrical sparks flying, but in some ways was an even better experience.

We had the best waiter ever, who was friendly, knowledgeable, funny and freely gave his consigliere to make our meal seamless and creative.  I had a perfectly cooked Carciofi alla Guidia for antoipasta and ordered a gosssamer light, creamy, yet still crunchy rissotto con gambieri for prima piatta.  

At this point our waiter told us to wait, he had an idea for something not on the menu for our secondi.    

He brought us a whole redfish and offered to filet it ringside and braise it in a sauce with olives.

Here is the end result. A lemony tender filet that just melted in your mouth.  Wehe I thanked him for his consigliere, he just laughed and said, "I love my job."















When it came time for Dolce, he again made a spot-on suggestion.  Zabaglione made hot and fresh right at our table.  He wheeled over a cart with a burner and proceeded to break eggs, add sugar and heat and whisk like he was charging down the hill with the Garibaldini, all the while keeping up a steady stream of patter. The still hot, creamy custard-like zabaglione poured over fresh wild strawberries was life-changing.


Hrmmm,  that's the second time in only a week that I've
had my life changed by a dessert.  This is an interesting development

Afterward, he brought us limoncello and an amaretto liqueur (kept tactfully off our bill) and our night was made complete. The half kilometer walk back to Pamncrazio was like a dream in the cool night with stars peeking through the broken clouds.  It felt like living in a movie dream sequence. It only needed random music floating through the trees, but alas, it was just a Tuesday night.

We WILL return to Focolare.  A fantastic ristorante and we made a new friend.  Squad goals achieved.


Just a flat out great day was woven from a rainy Tuesday morning.

A Presto!




  

The best laid plans....

Market day.  Rain continues to be a companion. It IS winter after all, and sorta nice to not be paranoidly thinking about fire danger constantly as we do back home 12/24/7 in California. But pouring rain or the threat of it makes us think a bit harder about daily choices for aimless wandering. It's not so much fun to just walk and get lost in the Trastevere or the Centro Storica when one is wet and windblown.

That's okay, though. We planned on doing some marketing and designing a dinner to cook in the appartamento for a Friday night and even though the lovely market in the piazza Cosimato was certain to be a drippy affair, we made plans to go into the Testaccio neighborhood to a huge indoor market that  just dwarfs any farmers market I've ever seen or been to.

Absolute heaven on earth for a market day And far beyond just mountains of fresh produce, the T-market has food stalls and cheese stacked as high a the moon, and hopefully, the one item I really wanted to find; a ferro -  a pasta rolling rod for making my own custom pasta del campo.

But the fates got in the way again. Being rainy and forecast for thundershowers, we cabbed it over to the Testaccio neighborhood and in wrestling ourselves out of the tiny cab, a phone was lost. Which was pretty much a disaster as it was the one phone we jailbroke and inserted an Italian sim card and internet service for navigation and well, things like calling a cab while out wandering and being caught in a thunderstorm.

On queue, the sky opened up and started dumping rivers of water on Rome.  I'm not sure what the Italian word for bummer is but it was definitely a brutta situazione.

We had another phone, which if we could find Wifi we could be saved, but although the market had gorgeous melanzana, wifi was non-existent.  We headed out to try and find a cafe or ristorante with wifi. Not so easy as the huge Testaccio market kind of cornered the market, so to speak, on places to eat and we were in a bit of an industrial, warehouse sector.

After a while of walking fruitlessly in the rain, and beginning to consider throwing myself dramatically in front of a speeding Fiat so as to be taken by ambulance to somewhere warm and dry, Patty, of course, saved the day as she always does.  She found a ristorante which since it was a bit early for pranzo was stone empty, but they said they'd certainly let us and provide some food.

La Toricella was a huge place with tables for days and it felt a bit weird to be the only customers, but the owner, an older gentleman, made us feel warmly welcomed (I love Italians) and said, of course we have free wifi while handing us a menu.

When I ordered the zuppa a castagne e faggioli he proudly told me he made it himself and congratulated me on my choice. Confidence was beginning to rise.

The zuppa was fabulous with roasted and softened chestnuts from Abruzzo floating alongside white beans with just the right amount of garlic in a steamy broth with tiny diced carrots. I could certainly tell why our host was so proud of his recipe. I sopped up every last drop with the fresh bread provided. 

Happy and warm inside and out we got a fresh cab and made it home to the warm and happy puppies,

and with a little sleuthing we managed to locate and message our original cab driver who lo and behold drove to us and delivered the rogue phone. A lovely man named Emiliano Pelosi who even got out of his cab and came down our stairs to our door to save us the walk up to the street.  He was surprised by our rather large rescue/reward tip, but we insisted.

Indeed, The best laid schemes o' mice an men, aft gang agley. But they aft turn out just fine as well, due to the good nature of most humans. Graze Millie, Emiliano, wherever you are this morning. We won't forget your kindness.

Today we head back to the Testaccio Market for round two.  I WILL have that ferro.

PS:  We hit a small neighborhood marketo in Monte Verde and still eked out a modest meal of gnocchi in a sauce of guanciale and zucchini with plenty of fennel and rosemary and garlic.

A Presto!

Update!!  Much more success on day two.  We wandered for hours and saw everything, had a lunch of perfectly cooked suppli on demand, joined in the moda of a glass of prosecco while shopping and brought home a rabbit for dinner with veggies and fresh bread.  I could go here everyday......

A day in four neighborhoods

Yesterday, on a somewhat rare sunny sky day, I took the majority of the day off of actual work (sentencing myself to working into the evening hours) and took a lovely long and leisurely 5-hour walk around the city.  It sounds like a lot of walking but Rome is smaller than you think and what may look like a hefty hike on a map turns into just a few alleys and interesting streets away until you hit that magnificent square and fall into a dreamlike montage of a Gregory peck/Audrey Hepburn movie. Especially when you are dedicated to traveling not as the crow flies, but as the bufala wanders,  The Italians even have a word for it, bighellonare: to loiter,  saunter,  browse.

So bighellonare we did down the hill into the Trastevere after our ritual morning coffee at Bar Gianicolo,  heading slowly and majestically toward the Ponte Sisto*. 


* The bridge on the Tiber where the boy Rafaello was cut down by French cannon fire in the fight for the republic in 1849 and got himself memorialized on Giancolo hill symbolizing all the youth of Rome who contributed to the cause.

it was a gorgeous leafy autunno day with quiet streets, early enough that the restaurants were still taking food deliveries and just beginning to roll open their gates to prep for the lunch hours. We passed a Strumenti Antica Restorivo and Luthier shop with an elderly man in the back playing a slow song on a bassoon (I assumed he'd just repaired the instrument and was testing).  Lots of old piano forte and guitars and harps piled to the ceiling. I must go back another time and speak to him. He had a small handwritten sign on a chair out front asking for donations as he takes care of neighborhood stray cats.  Of course, he does. His shop is the fourth door on the left if you find yourself inexplicably on this street one day.

More amazing street art. The Trastevere's walls are just covered with it in certain sections. This one right next to some legal weed shops.

Crossing the Tiber we headed north with our goal being the Campo di Fiori market for browsing, some food for dinner and to search out a spot Patty had read about that has just fanstastico Pizza Bianca -  the ultimate Roman street food that MUST be consumed before you can call yourself even nominally a Roman.

On the way, we chanced by the French embassy with its cool, quiet fontana and not street art, but a fresco I initially thought was - it looked vaguely Grateful Dead-ish, but in fact, was an old sign marking a cemetery.

 .                                    

fe

A few blocks more and we turned a corner into the Campo di Fiori.  Field of flowers, which it once was - an open-air farmers market and a fantastic selection of produce, cheese, meat, spices, and wine, in a huge square lined with ristoranti, bookshops and flower stands.  Heaven on earth.

Wandering through the market I ended up ditching the idea of pizza bianco when I passed a stall that offered huge porchetta sammiches carved fresh off the pig. It looked amazing and hot off the press and wrapped in newspaper tasted like Paradiso. Unlike Americano sandwiches slathered in mustard and mayo and vinegar and cheese, this sandwich was purity defined. Fresh porchetta spiced and crisp and fatty, sliced per order and placed on fresh ciabatta then pressed hot in a grill.  All the flavors of rosemary and parsley and garlic from the porchetta came through clearly and unfiltered by condiments.  Il mio spiritu crescere!! 

Patty held off and got a few slices of piazza bianco from a shop on the corner and we sat on the edge of the market on the rim of a fontana as happy as any two people could be, people watching and happily munching. The photo two shots up was shot from the fontana with a porchetta sammich in one hand and a camera in the other. La dolce vita indeed,

For dinner, back in the market I bought some super fresh garlic cloves and pomodori from a produce stand.  The Nonna running the stand gave us some plastic bags to hold while she filled her hands with fresh, bright red Giulieta pomodori. Boy-howdy could she hold a lot.  I said "Troppo, forse mezzo". and she smiled and let about 5 tomatoes drop back into the bin.  She certainly knew how to make a sale.  I decided there is no such thing as too many tomatoes and bagged them all. I have found my favorite produce stand.  Mi adoro, nonna. 

Only a few blocks away was the Piazza Navona, one of the larger public squares with fantastic sculptured fountains; the centerpiece being the famous 4 rivers of the Christian world, by Berlini.

The sublime, the majestic and the flat out weird.  Berlini was an amazing dude.

Neptune harvesting some calamari for dinner.

I've read that in th 1700's the city used to flood the piazza for a while each summer by blocking the fountains, to turn the square into a huge lake.  Lago di Novona. It was wildly popular during a hot summer in Roma,

We then headed vaguely northeast on side streets towards the Centro Storica as we decided we needed to see the Pantheon again, one of the most magnificent buildings in the world. On the way, on a connecting side street, we passed a panetteria and decided we needed bread for our dinner as well.  In the front window was a round of mortadella as big as a truck tire and inside the shop it smelled strongly of fresh bread, sugar and dolce.  iI took all my willpower not to load up on pastries and tarts and chocolate confections, but to stick to pane per cena. And the bread we got was just flat out, one of the best loaves I've ever had. Maybe it's because it smelled of sugar from being surrounded by racks 

and racks of dolci.

I'm eating a piece right now for breakfast the next day and it's still as sweet and tender with a crackly crust. So good it doesn't need anything. No butter, evoo or acerto balsamica. If I ever move to Rome permanently, I will buy an apartment on this street so I can shop here daily.  Hourly, maybe!


Around the next corner was the Pantheon, as majestic and solemn as we remembered and we took refuge in sitting in its silence in the rows of pews near the altar and then a visit to Rafael's tomb before going out again to view the obelix and fontana in the square.

We then, after yet another espresso in a bar near the piazza Petra and the rain beginning to fall fast-tracked it back to the Trastevere and Gianicolo hill, just in time to log into a workday.

This was the type of day I dreamed of having when the idea of working remotely from Rome for the winter hit me last summer. 

A presto...