Brucatos Italy France Belgium 2015: Food and more food!

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Ciao!

Me at Marco's Bar!

Dinner last night was wonderful! We were looking for a more local place to go, and read Luciana’s tips for the apartment. One of these included “Roberto & Loretta’s” restaurant, probably a 10-12 minute walk from the flat. We made reservations for “7:40 p.m.” – rather an odd time we thought, but whatever. But being us, and not wanting to be late, we were, of course more than half an hour early – and they weren’t open yet! We decided to see if we could find a place to have a glass of wine, and just a couple of blocks away found Marco’s Bar, which had three or four inside tables. We had some lovely glasses of Prosecco along with olives, chips and peanuts, all free (well, not the Prosecco)! But Marco’s itself was fascinating. It’s almost like a tiny convenience store – they had milk, and butter, and all sorts of yogurt as well as cases of ice cream and even some fancy desserts! Such fun!

Lovely dining room

R's prosciutto and mozzarella

Back to Roberto & Loretta’s and voila! – this time they were open! And of course we were the first people there. They have a lovely patio in front of the restaurant, but to avoid smoke, we chose inside and were shown to a lovely table. The restaurant is nicely furnished, with a warm and friendly vibe to it. This place is obviously a “family” restaurant in the best sense of the word. There is what looks to be a special family table where two small children were having their dinner, and Roberto himself took our order. As my Roberto says, he is definitely “the guy” in charge.

For starters, R decided to give prosciutto and bufala mozzarella a try, and he loved it! I actually had TWO appetizers to start – a Roman artichoke as well as the bruschetta with bresaola; both amazing, and fortunately the artichoke was small!

My bruschetta and bresaola

Tiny artichoke

Then Robert had their filet of beef, which was cooked rare, but drowned in a mustard and green pepper sauce, along with roast potatoes. He said the steak was great, but way too much sauce. I had their tagliatelli with grated black truffles on top (I am definitely a sucker for anything “tartufo”) in a butter sauce – and ate up every single bite! Wanted to lick the bowl…

For dessert, Robert had their fresh fruit salad, which he enjoyed, and I had their pana cotta (like R’s crème brulee) with frutti di bosce and currents; excellent, but I couldn’t do it justice! We enjoyed ourselves so much that we’ve booked “our” table again for tonight! Back to the flat around 9:30 and to sleep shortly thereafter!

R's steak and fried potatoes

My pasta with shaved truffles

More later!

xxx

Lovely night’s sleep – all of 9 hours, which we both obviously needed. The heat is really taking a toll on Robert, but fortunately, there are lots of windows in the flat on two different sides, so we’ve got a lovely cross breeze. Also, it gets really nice and cool overnight, which is wonderful sleeping weather!

Today my plan was to head out to the Parco degli Aquedotti – Aqueduct Park, which we have seen from the air coming into the smaller Rome airport, Ciampino, but have never seen up close.

According to Rick Steves Rome, it’s an easy walk from Linea A metro stop Giulio Agricola, which is right down the street.

In all, it was about 8 stops, but there wasn’t too much traffic on Sunday morning, which was nice. We got off and headed upstairs, and the Park was relatively easy to find – and wow! There were aqueducts! In all, there were something like 10 – 12 aqueducts built over the span of the Roman empire, all designed to bring clean water to the capital to run its sewer system and dance through the various fountains all over town.

Happy diner!

Panna cotta with berries

As there were no working “pumps” yet invented (and it was a l-o-n-g time before electricity) the entire system had to rely on gravity to make the sometimes 80 or 90 km run into Rome. I’ve been reading a book on Rome, and actually just finished the part about how surveyors and builders made the calculations to get the grade of the aquadotti just right – very complicated, but the Romans were great engineers. The only difficulty turned out to be, that when “barbarians” from the “north” (so whether this was Mongol hordes or Celts or whatever) wanted to capture and sack Rome, all they had to do was disable the aqueducts and suddenly, Rome was without water – and they couldn’t hold out too long in that condition.

NOTE: I'm posting all the aqueduct photos at the end so as to not disturb the flow of the food!

We took a really lovely hike along several different acqueducts, and with the red of the poppies everywhere, it was truly a beautiful day! There were families picnicking and playing games, runners and joggers, and lots of dog walkers all over – we had a thoroughly enjoyable time! We finally came upon a soccer club where we were able to replenish our water supply; lots of kids and family members all around, all (according to Robert!) talking to each other at the same time, and of course, gesturing non-stop!

As it was now heading on toward lunch, we left the park by another entrance and headed back to the Metro Linea A at Lucio Sestio to find a place to eat.

R at Wave for lunch!

Excellent artichokes

And that’s when we discovered that while there were any number of bars open, we couldn’t find any restaurants! I’m surmising that it’s because we are way far away from the normal “tourist” Rome, and people are having their big meal of the day family-style, as they do in France! That being the case we thought we might have more luck near our apartment, so hopped back on the Metro to try our luck.

Here again, there really wasn’t much open at all in our neighborhood! There was a craft market in the center of Piazza Re di Roma, but that was about it. So, we walked a bit, and decided to head down toward San Giovanni. Finally, less than a block from our apartment, we found “Wave.” And wow, what a place! First of all, it is simply but beautifully decorated, and seems to be a combination of Italian cooking meets Japanese cuisine; a very unusual combination, we thought.

As it was early, we had the entire restaurant to ourselves – which is one way not to have to think about smoke!

R's "pasta" stuffed with cheese

My pasta carbonara

We ordered water and looked at a very interesting menu. We both started with the Roman artichokes, which were small and served with a very tasty vinaigrette. The presentation was lovely! Then I had their thick pasta carbonara, with a butter and egg dressing accented with thickly cut and very crispy pancetta (which equates to our bacon). It was fabulous! Robert’s dish was much more unusual. On the menu, the translation (loosely) was pasta basket with cheese – but then the waiter tells us that actually, while it may “say” pasta, it’s really NOT pasta at all! Huh?! Being the brave guy that he is, he opted to have it whatever it was, and he was certainly not disappointed! He was presented with a dish of what looked to be individually fried incredibly thin wonton skins, stuffed with Puglia cheese. And it was delicious! All washed down with glasses of a wonderful Italian white wine. We’re just so sorry that it took us until the day before we left to find this amazing place! We would definitely have returned, without doubt! Finished our glasses of wine, and headed down the street and around the corner to the flat. Now it’s officially naptime!

At some point tonight I am going to have to start getting organized for our move on to Florence, which we’re doing tomorrow about 11:30 a.m. by train. We are really, really going to miss our wonderful apartment! We have been so spoiled and comfortable here; much more room than the little house we lived in in Altadena for 22 years! And so, we will say, Arrivederci, Roma!

Lots of love,

xxx