Rome and Florence and Cinque Terre 🇮🇹
Rome and Florence and Cinque Terre 🇮🇹
Intel from Italy.
I bought pretty bad gelato at an extremely unpleasant shop a few nights ago. Something was off with the texture of every flavor I tried and since this place didn’t have one of those TWO SAMPLES MAX signs, I tried almost all of them. Still, I got a cup of walnut and fig gelato because I believed the woman working there when she told me it was her favorite flavor. My friend and I laughed about how artificial it tasted under the store’s flickering fluorescent lights and over the Z100 blasting through its speakers.
When I was in Italy last month, a bartender in Monterosso laughed and told me not to trust people so easily after he joked that the closest bathroom was a mile down the road. But when I asked the man driving the boat that brought me there if he’s ever seen sharks in the water I was floating in, he told me I should trust people more. I let these warring comments occupy my mind for days until I told two Roman guys that I was visiting from New York, to which they said, “We love America, Bill Clinton was the best president.” After that, I decided Italian men were crazy.
This is far from a guide to Italy. Instead, it’s a bunch of intel I would want if I were going to any of these places for the first time. Some of my meals there were delicious, some were fine. Do with my opinions what you will.
ROME
I’m sorry to report that Al Moro can be skipped. I am a very forgiving diner, but the carbonara was cold, the rigatoni all’Amatriciana we ordered came with bucatini and no explanation and the zabaione was just fine. I wouldn’t go out of my way to go back, but if you do end up there for some reason, get the excellent Roman artichokes — every bite melts like butter in your mouth.
I had a sweet meal at Trattoria Pennestri, where you’re greeted with a scrunched shut brown paper bag filled with hot bread. The eggplant parmesan didn’t excite me when I saw it on the menu, and it wasn’t very pretty when it arrived, but its ultra concentrated tomato sauce and custary sheets of peppery roasted eggplant won me over. We were very luckily served a crispy, burnt-edged corner slice. The pasta and wine were also delightful here.
The Roscioli empire controls an entire block of the Campo de’ Fiori neighborhood. There’s a wine bar, a restaurant, a caffé and the only one you should care about: Antico Forno Roscioli. You will probably have to wait in line, but it will move fairly fast, and if you’re with someone you can take turns peeking in the window to scope out what you want to order. After my experience at New York’s Roscioli, my hopes were not high, but the focaccia slices were in fact delicious here, and the ricotta chocolate chip crostata I ordered at the last second was easily the best thing I ate the entire trip. Imagine if a cannoli was actually good — barely sweetened ricotta filling sprinkled with mini chocolate chips and baked between buttery, golden brown crusts.
I think the creamy, crunchy wild strawberry tart is a summer special at Pasticceria Regoli, but it’s still worth a trip to this very fun and old school bakery. I love the font and the tiny cappuccinos and the cakes shaped like stars and the way they wrap every pastry like a present.
The gelato at Giolitti is as good as everyone says it is. Chocolate sorbet with banana gelato is the best combination you could ever order.
FLORENCE
I’m sorry but the wine windows are fun! BABAE in Santo Spirito has one next door with cheap spritzes and glasses of Lambrusco. We hung out on the sidewalk for a few hours (glasses) and miraculously never saw a line form or anyone be annoying.
Osteria Santo Spirito was delicious and cozy, but you should know there’s no AC and it gets hot in there. A line starts forming about 30 minutes before they open, but we got there 15 minutes before and still secured a table. I wish I knew to order half portions of the pasta — the broiled, cheesy gnocchi was as good as I’d heard but incredibly rich. I also loved the briny spaghetti and clams. We heard a lot of people asking their server if they made spritzes. They do.
Il Santino was a cool place to drink wine, which is not at all an original thought based on how many people spilled out of it and onto the sidewalk every night. It’s also lovely and much less crowded in the afternoon, when you can order an almost too-reasonably priced pancetta, pecorino and honey toast that really hot, uninterested Italian girls will bring over to you.
La Giostra kind of feels like a New York steakhouse at Christmastime. It’s big and wooden and the ceilings are lined with twinkling string lights. The old, friendly Italian staff joke around with each other all night and every table gets a complimentary dish of bruschetta and other small (not that good, but besides the point) appetizers. We waited forever, and it was one of the more expensive meals we had on the trip, but the octopus carpaccio and balsamic filet mignon were both excellent. I did not have the pear ravioli, but every other table did.
All of the gelato I ate in Italy was fabulous, but Sbrino’s speculoos gelato was special. The base must be made from cream that the cinnamon cookies have been steeped in, and there are ripples of creamy speculoos butter, plus little crunchy bits of cookie. Their cones are tiny, crispy and also taste a little like a cookie. My favorite part about this place, though, is how they spin each scoop of gelato to look like soft serve.
CINQUE TERRE
MANAROLA
Manarola feels like a bunch of hills stacked on one big hill. Trattoria dal Billy is a tiny, fish-focused restaurant that’s somehow wedged between two of those smaller hills. The view is gorgeous — it looks out onto one side of town and over the water. We walked right in, drank white wine that was made in town, ate the grilled fish of the day and made a reservation on the way out for the next night. It felt like a neighborhood restaurant in that way, and also in the way that nothing was life changing, but everything was exactly what we wanted it to be.
I do not like cooking classes, especially ones where things like this happen. But because I am a good friend, I went to the viral pesto making class at Nessun Dorma and I must say, I had fun. The view is gorgeous, everyone starts drinking white wine at 10am and the pesto was delicious. I’d be crazy not to recommend it.
MONTEROSSO
Monterosso is the town in Cinque Terre with sandy beaches and rows of striped umbrellas that you have to pay to sit under. It’s packed with tourists and toddlers and chaotic energy. I wanted to leave as soon as I arrived, but we had spent hours on a boat drinking white wine and laying under the hot sun and swimming in the open ocean. We were starving and La Cantina di Miky had a table outdoors, right above the beach that the sun was setting into. We drank our first glasses of red wine of the trip, ate our first salad, and split a silky shrimp spaghetti.
This letter is free because I like that everyone can comment, especially with a topic like this one. I want to know where you guys have eaten in Italy, what you loved, what you were disappointed by.
Tomorrow, paid subscribers will get a letter all about Milan. I had two very different experiences at one infamous bar, made a trip to McDonald’s, (wrongfully) dreaded my last meal at a gaudy international restaurant group’s spot and left behind sandals I shouldn’t have. Like Milan, it’s a fun Perfect City.
Hope to talk to you then. Otherwise, I’ll leave you with one last bite. I’m bravely admitting that I loved the Delta tiramisu on my flight home. Maybe it was my vodka soda-klonopin plane cocktail, but I could not stop scraping spoonfuls of thick, luscious mascarpone cream into my mouth.
NEXT WEEK
I’m not sure yet. Someone inspire me.