“I called and called your name,” said the dashing Italian man plaintively, looking at once engaging and wounded, like I had just stabbed him in the Roman Forum. “You never heard me? You didn’t turn around?”
This was not, as it might seem, some kind of romantic sketch. It was Saturday night in Trastavere, Rome’s party neighbourhood across the Tiber, and tables for dinner were in short supply. The little restaurant near the Santa Maria church had been full, but the waiter at the door had promised to put us on his list. “Have a drink at the bar, and I will come and find you,” he said, winking.
Forty minutes (and two delicious cocktails) later, no table. “Never mind, even if you didn’t listen for me,” he said, sweeping his list off the table like a Corleone. “I will find you a place — just for you.”
Even though this was a patent lie, how could one not succumb to this virtuoso performance, delivered with a wink — and those delicious pink gin fizzes? Disarmed, I found myself being walked back inside. Five minutes later, we were taking our drinks to a tiny table in the corner.
An Italian charm offensive is irresistible, and it is equally impossible not to be smitten by a Roman spring. On a recent March weekend, Rome was demonstrating la dolce vita, the sweet life, with a vengeance — colossal palaces on one hand, twisty streets with dim bars and hidden chapels on the other. Imperial ruins, medieval alleys, baroque churches and fascist piazzas were all gussied up with azaleas, oranges and cherry blossoms, all the sidewalks carpeted in pale pink petals.
And though we spent most of the weekend in the tourist-packed city centre, the food didn’t disappoint (barring one sad papal panini in the Vatican café).
Our first meal, at the hip Marzapane restaurant, had been capable enough — prawn tartare with burrata and smoked aubergine cream, a duck-and-foie-gras duo, anchovy-and-ginger risotto, cabbage gnocchi with wild boar sauce, and the perfect focaccia. But the real heart of Rome was elsewhere.
Breakfast involved short dark espressos, eaten with a cornetto (“little horn”), an Italian version of a croissant. For lunch, pizza (rosso, with tomato sauce, or bianco, without) on the fly, sliced off with scissors, was as Roman as one could want.
At Emma, a pizzeria near the Campo di Fioro, the salumi platter was an enormous bouquet of porcine petals arranged in whorls on a plate — mortadella, 24-month-aged prosciutto, pata negra . Burrata, that miraculous money bag of fresh mozzarella whose centre is filled with mozzarella curds and fresh cream, came studded with sundried tomatoes. After a round of fritti , fried zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese, we almost didn’t have room for the pizza. Almost.
Emma’s pizza dough, dreamed up by owners Francesco and Illaria Roscino and baker Pierluigi Roscioli (the toppings come from Roscioli’s brother at neighbouring Salumeria Roscioli), ferments for two days before cooking in a 660°F wood oven, which results in a perfectly thin, chewy, crackly Roman-style pizza.
But pizza, however genius an invention, belongs to Naples. What then is a true Roman speciality? The imperial city’s food is surprisingly rustic: chickpeas, fava beans, chicory, artichokes, pecorino. Market stalls brimmed with peas, leeks, lemons, strawberries, asparagus and radicchio. And poky artichokes, the star of the season, were everywhere, stuffed with breadcrumbs, garlic and herbs, then braised ( alla Romana), or tenderised and crisp-fried while the hearts stayed soft ( alla gidia , in the Jewish style).
Seafood was mainly cod and sardines; meat lords over the rest. Offal, the gnarly bits like pancreas, tongue, intestines, hooves, hearts and tails, features heavily too. But stewed tripe with garlic and onions seemed unfair to the people soon to be squashed next to us in the Sistine Chapel afterwards, so we chose pasta for lunch instead.
Both cacio e pepe and carbonara are examples of Rome’s thrifty peasant repertoire. The first is one of Rome’s great inventions and it involves three ingredients — pecorino Romano cheese ( cacio ), black pepper ( pepe ), and the pasta cooking water — which come together to form a smooth, sharp sauce.
There’s no messing around with carbonara either. The recipe involves neither cream nor milk; just raw egg yolk swirled with black pepper, pancetta or guanciale (cured pork jowl) and pecorino. When a French website published a heretic carbonara recipe featuring cream last year, it nearly caused Italy to declare war.
The offally, the thrifty, and the starchy bits of Roman tradition all come together in rigatoni con la pajata , which is only for the strong of stomach — tube-shaped pasta in a sauce made from the intestines (and whatever coats them) of an unweaned calf. Unfortunately or fortunately, we didn’t encounter any.
Our last evening had passed in a haze of baroque Bernini sculptures, Prosecco and sparkly spritzers, then cocktails at the noisy bar while my new friend pretended to be organising our table. And now we were sitting down at last, with a plate of mozzarella and prosciutto di Parma and San Marzano tomatoes. My amatriciana pasta was perfect, porky and spicy, and the bucatini, thick spaghetti with a hole through the centre, was the perfect vehicle for the chunky sauce of tomatoes, peperoncino, guanciale and pecorino.
We walked home through the raucous streets of Trastavere, stopping for sublime hazelnut and raspberry gelato at midnight. On the bridge, a man was selling cream-filled doughnuts — a little piece of dolce vita to take home.