Food tasting in Italy. Rome and Ariccia

When it comes to Italy, we don’t really plan our vacations. We usually wait for a good plane tickets offers and then decide if we go or not. Most of the time, our chosen destinations in Italy are Milan and Rome, mainly because we have friends and cousins living there and we don’t have to stress about accommodation. The only vacation we planned in detail was the one we took last summer when we spent 3 weeks on a road trip, managing to see about 10 cities. Plane tickets nowadays can be pretty cheap (thank you low-cost airlines) and that’s how we managed to surprise our parents back in March with a city break to Milan and Venice. This time we found a good offer to Rome and, together with a good friend, we decided to go and visit our cousins in Ostia. And since our traveling friend Andreea is not what you’d call a typical tourist (she doesn’t like to wait in line too much to visit various sights and doesn’t love big tourist crowds) and since we’ve already visited Rome various times, we decided to just walk aimlessly on the streets, eat gelato and traditional food (well, we mostly ate pasta).

The first thing we do when we arrive in Italy is to eat gelato. We’ve tried different flavors over the years and decided that our favorite is the pistachio one. We always choose the “artigianale” gelatos because the gelato is more natural, without the artificial syrup being added. Last year we discovered a gelato place that was even better than the artigianale ones, it’s called Cambio Vita and everything is organic and has the best gelato we’ve ever tried.

Everything is naturally made, with a distinct fresh flavor. We’ve tried the ones with peaches and pears, and besides the fact that they had pieces of fruit in them, we didn’t feel like we were eating ice cream, it was something better. And of course that we tried the pistachio one. Almost everywhere, pistachio gelato has a greenish color, but the one from here was more brownish (we later found out that that that’s how it’s suppose to be, for more of a natural flavor). We don’t have to tell you how good it was, do we? It felt like we were eating from a pistachio paste, that’s how strong the flavor was. If you’re planning a vacation in Rome, you can’t miss this gelato place. It truly is incredible.

Breakfast in Italy means “colazione”, a coffee and a pastry. In Rome area, all pastries are called “cornetti” and up North (Milan area) you ask for “brioche”. You pay first and then tell them what kind of pastry you want (our favorites are the ones with vanilla cream). It’s easier with the coffee. Since one of us doesn’t like the taste of coffee, we discovered the ‘café al ginseng”, a beverage with ginseng extract, very energizing, with more of nutty flavor than coffee. And as for cappuccino, we’ve read in many tourist guides and travel blogs that you shouldn’t order it after 10 am because the locals will give you weird looks. Well, we’ve always ordered cappuccinos at any hour and no one looked at us funny. In fact, even the Italians order it after 10 am (sure, they prefer the espresso, but we couldn’t drink that without having a mini heart attack, it’s too strong).

When it comes to pizza and pasta, you will love Italy. If we’re being honest, we only eat pizza with our cousins in Ostia, we prefer to order pasta and risotto at restaurants (that’s until traveling sister Simy decided to eat healthy and didn’t touch the pasta dishes on this vacation). Rome region has a few famous pasta dishes. The famous Carbonara were born here and you can’t go to Rome without trying them. This is the first dish that we order the first day we’re in Italy. It’s a classic.

This is also the place that L’Amatriciana came from, also a classic pasta dish. Another one that is specific to Rome region is Cacio e Pepe, a simple pasta dish, just with Pecorino Romano cheese and pepper, but very delicious. That last dish that we’ve tried and that’s representative for this region is pasta alla Gricia, which has the same ingredients as the Carbonara, but without the egg. We’ve also tried the Boscaiola and of course, lasagna. In Ostia (a city 30 minutes away from Rome) you can find a lot of pasta dishes with seafood, but since we don’t really like seafood, we haven’t tried them. The only thing that we did eat was a risotto in a creamy shrimp sauce, absolutely delicious.

Since this vacation was more about relaxation and food, one Sunday afternoon we went with our cousins to Ariccia, just for the food. Ariccia is a small town 30 km from Rome, famous for the “porchetta di Ariccia”, slow cooked pork, served as a main dish or in sandwiches, street-food style. When we usually go out to eat, we skip the antipasti and choose just the main dish (pasta most of the time), but on this vacation though, we decided to order bruschettas everywhere.

In Ariccia, since there were quite a lot of people at our table, they brought us almost all the starters they had in their menu. And that’s how we got to eat bruschettas, roasted eggplants and artichokes with olive oil, grilled scamorza cheese with spinach, porchetta, various types of salami, prosciutto and sausages, all before the main dish. That was always our problem…if we have the antipasti, we don’t really have room for anything else. But since it was starting to rain and we realized that we’ll stay a few hours at the restaurant, we ate a bit of everything and then everybody ordered pasta.

After 5 pm, almost all the restaurants start to serve “aperitivo”, snacks with a glass of wine or cocktail. Prices start at 5 euros and you can get all you want from the serving plates. We only managed to have aperitivo once, mainly because we had lunch pretty late every day and didn’t have room for anything else…except gelato. We don’t know when our next trip to Italy will be, but until then we’ll just have to settle for the Italian restaurants in Bucharest.