Mangiano

Along with the renaissance, baroque art, world class soccer (calcio around these parts), and high fashion, Italy may be most known for its incredible cuisine. Italian food has to rank highest in appeal factor of any ethnic food in the world. Are there actually people out there that don’t like pizza? Pasta? Gelato? I’ve yet to meet a single one, and am not sure I’d want to.

With such great food literally at every turn, we have struggled with trying to keep a lid on the gluttony to both keep our wallets fat and our our bellies flat (or as flat is they were before we got to Rome). For this reason, we have been trying to be good and cook as much as possible. Natalia and I are not quite Martha Stewart and Mario Batali either, but the efforts have been quite fun. Most of the satisfaction is due to the plethora of fresh foods available here. We’ve been spoiled by the access to delicious tomatoes, onions, peaches, nectarines, and melons among others, which have helped spice up the meals. Rome also has a ton of mom and pop markets that we’ve enjoyed hitting up, but last weekend we hit the motherlode of all produce markets. Near Piazza Vittorio Emmanuel, there is a huge indoor market filled with booths selling fresh meats, vegetables, fruits, and herbs (no, not that kind). Quite the find.

(Market Esquilino at Vittorio Emmanuel)

Even more exciting was the fraction of the cost that shopping in this market was versus the supermarket costs. I remember expecting to pay about 3 euro for a few carrots, 3 peaches, and a zucchini and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the bill was 1.5 euro. Nice. So this has helped us quite a bit in keeping the food costs down as well as trying to immerse ourselves further into daily local culture. Dabbling in the culinary arts has definitely been one of the early highlights of living here in Rome.

(home cooking)

While on the topic of food, we estimate that of the total restaurants in town, 90% are probably Italian restaurants. We’re not sure if this is in line with how things are in other places like France, Spain, or even Russia, but coming from the US, particularly SF and NY, such limited variety has been a bit startling. The only non-Italian restaurants we’ve tried have been an Indian restaurant and two different Chinese restaurants. Both Chinese restaurants were decent but, as a self-proclaimed connosieur of good Chinese food, I would give the restaurants a 3 out of 10 when compared to SF Chinese food and a 5 out of 10 when compared to NY Chinese restaurants. I have noticed that most Chinese restaurants here are usually pretty busy. I guess everyone likes Chinese food, though describing chow mein as spaghetti in the menus probably eases the transition for the locals.

So we are continuing to steadily increase our home-cooked menus and have had a lot of fun doing it. That said, I of course can't help but to treat myself to the finer offerings that Rome has to offer.