DINING OUT: Antico Arco, ROME

I will always have my perennial favorite dining spots in Rome. Some are so inherently tied to wonderful meals with friends and loved ones that I will return, time and again, with fond memories. Some are casual trattorias and bars where we, our Roman crew, were regulars. Some were my local neighborhood joints. And others are more of the special occasion ilk, places to which I'd happily return as frequently as possible, but more realistically where I might dine once every year or two. Antico Arco is one of those beloved ristoranti in the last category.

The restaurant is situated at the top of the Gianicolo Hill above Trastevere, very near the American Academy of Rome and the Villa Aurelia (I used to spend a lot of time in this area, working, walking, swimming at a nearby hotel pool, etc., so I have many a memory tied to the immediate neighborhood). The space itself is unique. In this 19th century structure, there is a ground floor with a bar area upon entry and a long and narrow dining room, and an upstairs that used to seem like a cozy attic, but with a very tasteful, modern rehab several years back, it's now an elegant, airy space.

The restaurant was founded as a partnership between Patrizia Mattei, who studied for and dedicated herself to the creation of a fine dining establishment, along with her husband Maurizio Minore, and their friend Domenico Calio'. Their current chef is the talented Fundim Gjepali, Albanian by birth with culinary training under his belt in France, Spain, and Italy. He grasps Mediterranean flavors and Italian technique and brings a sophistication and eclecticism to Antico Arco's menu.

The Antico Arco wine cellar, storing some 20,000 bottles, is located in the catacombs of San Pancrazio which date to the 4th century AD. This cellar keeps the wines at a perfect temperature (both for aging/preserving but also for quaffing as soon as the bottle is brought to your table). The restaurant's wine list is an expansive one, and with 1200 labels, it's enviable for its depth of Italian varietals but features wines from all over the globe. I must admit I prefer to stay within the Italian peninsula when eating and drinking in Italy (with the occasional foreign invader!), and when in Rome, at a restaurant with an excellent wine list, I prefer to explore top local producers who might be under-appreciated, or whose varietals are lesser known. I put my trust in the hands of gifted somms who can bring interesting local wines to my attention, which is often how I find a new vino "obsession"!

As for the food at Antico Arco, you can select from an a la carte menu, or from the tasting menu. You can't lose with either option, and both types of menus allow you to sample from some of Antico Arco's most time-honored dishes, as well as the newest seasonal creations of the chef. Upon our last visit, we preferred to sit back and enjoy the tasting menu, so we didn't have to make many choices and could be a little, well, coddled. (Nothing wrong with that upon occasion!) We started off with the Crudo di ricciola (amberjack tartare) with ginger, lime, and puntarelle, that most Roman of winter veggies (shaved chicory stems). I love to start out any Mediterranean meal with a raw fish dish. It makes me happy and sets up a great meal to follow with a light, vibrant opener.

Our next course was another Antico Arco classic: a bright orange egg yolk nestled in a bed of creamy ricotta made to look like the egg white, studded with tones of black-and-white in cauliflower pieces and black truffle. The next dish was a chickpea soup with chestnuts flavored with anise and toasted rosemary breadcrumbs. My then-boyfriend (now husband) enjoyed this dish while I opted for a vegetable tart with melty toma cheese, as I try to avoid dishes featuring chestnuts and/or anise. It was a nice reprieve and nice of the chef to accommodate my rare-but-insistent whims! 

Then came the pasta course: another local classic of spaghetti alla carbonara, this time amped up with the delicious Verrigni pasta and lots of truffles, both cooked within the pasta sauce and shaved on top. It was rich and warming and exactly what a brisk Roman night was calling for. This was followed by a meat course of crispy-skinned duck, a foie gras medallion, and artichoke leaves: a dish more Roman than most people realize, but one that harks back to the days of the Roman empire, when it was traditional to eat game and their livers, which had been enriched by feeding the ducks and geese lots of local figs.

Artichokes are of course the current-day quintessential Roman vegetable. All of this was accompanied by wonderful white and red wines paired to perfection (I don't have a record of exactly which wines we were served, only that they were wonderful recommendations and that we left very happy)! We were also served a lovely cheese course before dessert -- a tradition that has waned in modern (lactose-intolerant) times, but one I thoroughly enjoy. Ours on this tasting menu was a "cannolo di caprino" -- a goat cheese cannolo that set the stage for the dessert of our choice to come.

Now, Antico Arco has been famous for a very long time for a dessert that has become pretty much ubiquitous the western world over...but that doesn't mean it's not completely worth it to get the dessert anyway. Yes, it's the molten chocolate cake. And yes, it's a winner. I don't care if squiggles of raspberry coulis are passe', either. I like them and they're the perfect accompaniment to the deep, melty dark chocolate of the warm cake. Its decadence is the perfect end to a great meal.

The mini profiterole with chocolate filling on a pool of vanilla bean creme anglaise, and various sweet mignon didn't hurt, either. 
 

We called a taxi to take us home after dinner. As we headed down the Gianicolo hill at the end of the evening, we asked the driver to pull over for a moment as we passed the Fontanone, lit up and gurgling away. It was the perfect spot to get out of the car for a moment, to show off Rome to my boyfriend, and take in the breathtaking view of the city at midnight, its monuments aglow and it streets bathed in amber lights, traffic still clogging its ancient roads. It's hard in that moment not to fall in love -- with Rome, with each other, with Italian food and Italy in general. It's amazing what a great meal can do.

Antico Arco
Piazzale Aurelio 7  00152

Roma
+ 39 06 581 5274
https://www.anticoarco.it/en/

LOCAL INGREDIENT: Guanciale

GUANCIALE. Pronounced Gwahn-CHAHHH-lay. People fall in love with the name itself, even before they taste it. Much like its milder sister cut of cured pork, the well-known pancetta, this specialty piggy part called guanciale is named after the location on the pig from which it comes. "Pancia" is the Italian word for belly, hence pancetta = pork belly. "Guancia" means cheek, so guanciale is cured pork jowl. And while pancetta is widely used in dishes up and down the Italian peninsula, guanciale is a distinctly Roman cut of cured meat.

We're all pretty familiar with pork belly. It's a fatty cut that became popular in the aughts on restaurant menus in America and overseas alike, because it's inexpensive and can be manipulated in numerous ways to make it taste delicious. After all, fat IS flavor. Still, the consistency, if not prepared properly, can be a turn-off to many diners. But used as the Italians do -- that is, sparingly and to great effect -- the unsmoked, cured pancetta lends great flavor to otherwise meatless pasta dishes, to bolognese sauce, to soups and salads and stews of all kinds. But the pork cheek, that cured, spiced jowl prepared by the Romans for millennia...well, that's a different pork game altogether. It's dense and unctuous, it's strongly-flavored and unique, peppery and pungent, refusing to just melt into the background of any dish. You can find guanciale all over Rome and the Lazio region, with particularly good versions in Roman salumerie and norcinerie (cured meat specialty shops). I love Norcineria Viola in Campo de' Fiori, as they have a great selection of guanciale and they give samples of all their salumi, upon request, as well. Also great - and for much more than just guanciale - is Volpetti, in Testaccio. The place is legendary for all kinds of Italian alimentary wonders.
 

Of the four classic Roman pasta dishes, guanciale is a star ingredient in three: Amatriciana, Pasta Alla Gricia, and Carbonara (a true Roman carbonara, anyway). It lends a fatty richness to vignarola, the Roman spring vegetable stew. And crisped up in batons or cubes or slices, it's a great match for eggs in any form...for sturdier salad greens like escarole, kale, spinach, or arugula...it's a great addition to soups and stracotto (meat stew)...and you can even find spicy guanciale to add a kick to everyday pastas, or to produce candied guanciale for a sweet-savory-spicy end product that goes with pretty much everything. on. earth. Did I mention how much I love guanciale? It turns out that over the course of a decade and a half of teaching cooking classes, both in Rome and in the U.S., I've turned a lot of my students onto the fine salume that is guanciale.  

Years ago I taught a Roman cuisine class with a market visit to an American couple, newlyweds honeymooning in Italy. Turns out they lived in New York City, and less than a year after their honeymoon, they got in touch with me wondering if I might be in New York the following month, as I had mentioned to them that I often returned to Manhattan at that time of year. They wanted me to cater a surprise birthday dinner for the husband's father, and they wanted the pasta all'amatriciana that I'd taught them to make, and a whole guanciale to gift the dad! So I smuggled an entire pork jowl, vacuum packed in my luggage, to use in this festive meal. But when I finally left my friends' apartment uptown to head to cater the dinner party, I'd forgotten the guanciale in my (vegetarian) friend's fridge! So my client and his brother ended up going on a "guanciale run" to get it from my friend's place while I cooked the meal. It was an insane series of events, but the look on the father's face when he walked into a dinner party cooked by his kids' "Roman chef" (me) with an entire bonus guanciale, was priceless. There were cheers and chants in guanciale's name, which was hilarious -- but gives you an indication of the pork lust and worshipful devotion this cured pork jowl elicits. "Long live guanciale!" they proclaimed. And I agree, whole hog-heartedly.

Norcineria Viola
Piazza Campoe de' Fiori 43
ROMA00186
+39 06 6880 6114 

Salumeria Volpetti
Via Marmorata 47
ROMA 00153
+39 06 574 2352
www.volpetti.com  

SPECIALTY FOODS: Rome's Antica Caciara

On Via San Francesco a Ripa, one of the main arteries leading to the heart of Trastevere, sits a renowned alimentari -- a specialty food store from which you can smell tangy wafts of cured meat and salty aging cheese at a 50 meter distance. Antica Caciara is an old-school shop in an old-school neighborhood, as referenced by its name. Cacio was the term for cheese (aged sheep's milk cheese, to be exact) in Rome before cheeses from cows, goats, and sheeps were all classified as cheeses, or formaggi, in 1920. This shop dates to 1900, ans so predated that law. Hence the term "Caciara" -- cheese shop, in Roman.  

I've wandered into this Trastevere institution on many an afternoon, without a shopping list in mind -- just an idea of wanting some salumi (cured meats) and formaggi (cheeses), and maybe a bag of rigatoni or a box of spaghetti, and a few other key ingredients that would allow me to throw together a pasta for dinner. Simple, nothing more and nothing less. But when you're dealing in Roman food, specifically, the few items in the "ingredients" column of any recipe are of utmost importance, often because they are the two or three flavors that make the dish. Cacio e pepe is a pasta with basically just pecorino cheese and black pepper to it. Carbonara? Eggs, guanciale (cured pork jowl), pecorino, and black pepper. Amatriciana? Tomatoes, guanciale, onion, and pecorino with peperoncino optional. Saltimbocca is just veal scaloppine with prosciutto and sage, with a white wine sauce consisting of wine, butter, and little else. So where do you go for these fine ingredients (aside from the butcher shop for the veal)? The best local alimentari you can find. And that's what Antica Caciara is.

You can find delicious dried pasta and fresh eggs here. You can find all of the canned goods (San Marzano tomatoes, Sicilian tuna, etc.) you need for a pasta or a salad. There is a selection of sott'olii (products preserved in oil), like sundried tomatoes, olives, artichokes, and mushrooms. There is bread, always bread. But most important are the meats and cheeses. Since this is Rome, the aged hard cheese of choice -- for eating on its own in chunks, or grating on pasta, or accompanying fava beans in the springtime -- is pecorino romano. Roman aged sheep's milk cheese: saltier with more of a bite than parmigiano reggiano, not unlike Romans themselves.

The fresh cheese of choice here is ricotta (a by-product of the pecorino-making process, naturally), here made from sheep's milk (and sometimes from cow's), always delicious. This is tossed in pastas and baked with vegetables into timbales. It's the main ingredient in the delicious Roman cheesecake, torta di ricotta. And it's perfect as is, spread on crostini with some fresh figs and a little aged balsamic. Really, there's very little you can't do with ricotta.

As for the salumi, of course prosciutto is always popular. But in Rome, the guanciale reigns supreme, particularly in the local pasta dishes I mentioned above. And Antica Caciara has the cured pork jowls hanging in the doorway, giving off their spicy funk. Who can resist? Not I. Romans love their guanciale and I became a part of the fan club very early on. I always had a guanciale ready for consumption in my fridge, lovingly wrapped in a muslin dish towel, so it was protected but could breathe. 

I was always ready to slice off a few pieces of the unctuous pork, to toss in the pan until the pieces became crispy and the rendered fat could be used to cook veggies or to start a pasta sauce with its porky goodness. There are other meat items here, of course, not the least of which is coglioni di mulo -- which means "mule testicles" but are really from the pig (no grazie!). But guanciale is the specialty and what tempts me most here. 

Whatever you choose, you can rest assured that you will be taken care of at Antica Caciara. And if you're lucky, you'll be waited on by the most cordial Romans I have ever encountered, Roberto Polica, the owner who has worked in the shop since he was 13, and inherited it from his family. The sheep's milk cheeses are made from the milk of his uncle's farm outside of Rome. Can you get more local than that? "Si, signora. Con piacere, signora. Qualcos'altro, signora?" He is charmingly formal and well-mannered, and always reminded me a bit of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. He is, simply put, the sweetest and most dedicated alimentari owner you could ever hope for. Stop in and say hello the next time you're passing through Trastevere!

ANTICA CACIARA

Via di San Francesco a Ripa 140 A/B

00153 Roma 

Trastevere neighborhood

+39 06 581.2815

 

QUICK BITE: Pizza a Taglio a Roscioli

Ah, pizza. Real Italian pizza. There are several ways to enjoy pizza, particularly in Rome. I adore pizza bianca, but that's for another time. Probably the way I eat pizza in Italy most frequently, and the easiest and quickest way to enjoy this Italian fast food, is pizza a taglio: pizza by the slice. Or, technically, by cut.

The Italian way to cut slices of pizza is not from a round pie, but rather from a long, rectangular slab of pizza, either made in a sheet pan tray, or cooked directly on the oven floor and hand-rolled out to a very oblong disc or an approximation of a rectangle. 

And it's often cut with scissors. That's right. It makes sense when you think about it. You point out how large or small a piece you'd like, and they literally cut you a piece to measure. It is then weighed and you pay by weight, so that pizzas that are loaded with lots of toppings, ranging from tuna and artichokes with mayo to chile pepper-parsley hot sauce to sausage and potatoes and porcini mushrooms...the more that is loaded on there, the more you pay per piece.

Giusto, no?

But what most expert chefs -- and eaters -- know is that often times, the simplest iteration of something, the purest form of the ideal, is the best. Roscioli  is a family-run business that's been around for decades. They've run what used to be a simple alimentari (specialty food store) since back in the '90s, when theirs was simply my local shop (that happened to carry Philadelphia cream cheese when none of the grocery stores did) -- an old reliable, if you will. With the new millenium, they ended up closing for a spell and completely remodeling to convert this into an upscale gastronomic temple to meats, cheeses, smoked fish, oils and vinegars...with an excellent restaurant and wine cellar added in for good measure.

Their bread bakery is down the street from their 'headquarters' and main restaurant (they've now expanded to include a local pizzeria nearby, and it seems they're always moving on to a new venture). This bread bakery is always busy and they have a great selection of classic Italian biscotti and pastries as well as their renowned bread and pizze (that's plural for pizza, kids). Their selection varies form day to day, but it's always delicious, and they always have the basics, which to me -- here, at least -- are the best. That's right, a simple pizza margherita ("plain" in American parlance), and in Rome what's referred to as pizza rossa ("red pizza") -- otherwise known as alla marinara, hold the oregano -- just tomato sauce, no cheese. The simplest of the simple. And in this case, the pizza dough and the tomato sauce are the only two ingredients you have. So they'd better be stellar.

Here you can see the specimen: a very thin, crackly crust. Blistered bubbles in the surface of the pizza dough itself, owing to extremely high temperatures of the pizza oven. Just a slick of tomato sauce and a brushing of olive oil to make the overall presentation glisten (one of my sayings regarding good food's appearance: it really shouldn't be matte). A sprinkling of Italian sea salt. And when you bite into the pizza, it needs some chew. Real, authentic, delicious pizza needs gluten to get that chewiness activated in the dough. And that's it. It couldn't really be more simple, though from the end result that's available out there, you'd think it would be one of the Italian (or otherwise) kitchen's greatest challenges. Roscioli rises to it, as do several other spots around Rome. I was just lucky enough to have Roscioli be my local. And I was also lucky enough to call Rome home, where a walk along the Tiber, pizza rossa in hand, is all in an afternoon.

DINING OUT: Grano -- Rome, Italy

Fresh from the process of updating and rewriting the Where to Eat section of the Fodor's Rome Guide 2012, I thought I'd post an expanded and modified (and personalized) review of one of the restaurants I added to the section this year.

GRANO is a contemporary trattoria in a charming piazza around the corner from the Pantheon. Aesthetically, the white walls covered, in parts, with colorful children's drawings, give the main dining room the look of a postmodern architectural schoolhouse. 

The smaller, second dining room with the addition of bookshelves, seems the school's library. And the outdoor deck with large white umbrellas and numerous tables would, in this metaphor, be the playground. On the whole, Grano is a light and lively restaurant, serving tasty food, at not-too-steep prices, to a mostly local crowd. All good things.

The kitchen is not quite chemistry lab, but it does turn out re-invented versions of Italian dishes, both Roman and from other regions up and down the Italian peninsula. For starters, the polpette di brasato con salsa verde are smallish meatballs of the famous piemontese wine-braised beef, here pulled, breaded, and deep fried, served on a slick of bracing green sauce. It's unusual and delicious. And for traditionalists, there are portions of pristine mozzarella di bufala and marinated anchovies served simply on a few leaves of arugula with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. 

A delicious tweak of a Sicilian classic is the octopus antipasto (which could also be a primo): instead of pairing it with chickpeas or canellini beans as is the practice, a grilled baby octopus is placed atop a mound of orzo perlato, a grain -- not the pasta version of orzo -- with a bite that matches the chew of Sicilian polpo (octopus), here rendered tender by a braise before being grilled. The primi here are often standouts, including, when available, a pasta with tiny baby clams paired with asparagi di mare, know in English as sea beans. This is a delicious, fresh-tasting combination that encapsulates the brininess of the sea in every bite. 

Also looking southward -- this time Campania -- is the simple pasta dish of tiny ditalini with a vegetarian "ragu" of sundried tomatoes, Gaeta olives, mozzarella, and basil. As for secondi, they're often less interesting. Porchetta (roasted suckling pig) with rosemary potatoes should be called 'porchetta...che peccato' (what a shame) because serving a so-so version of what can be one of The Greatest Things To Eat On This Planet is a sin.

Ditto the tuna with caponatina: Sicily has some of the most prized fresh tuna on the planet, and caponata is one of the world's great traditional vegetable dishes (trumps ratatouille ANY day). Italians now need to learn how to cook said tuna, and Roman chefs could use some schooling in the ways of making sweet-and-sour eggplant-veggie-heaven the way it's meant to be made. Still, the breaded calamari is perfectly good, and with a side of broccoli or sauteed chicory, it makes a tasty main course.

Desserts here are relatively delicious, even though they don't stray far from Italian standards like tiramisu'. But the atmosphere is so pleasant, it's worth poring over the wine list to find a dessert wine or digestivo you can enjoy with your dining mates. A limoncello, or an amaro, perhaps? I liked the setting so much that I chose to have a recent birthday dinner here, surrounded by a dozen or so dear friends. We lounged and lingered, we ate, drank, and were merry.

And my lovely friends showered me with wine and prosecco and limoncello (my holy trinity?), and lots of gorgeous gifts, like the handmade earrings of breathtaking bronze freshwater pearls and jet I'm modeling in the photo below. And when all was said and done, they managed to find a tasty chocolate dessert into which they lodged a candle. I made my birthday wish -- and although it's bad luck to divulge that wish, I can say that it involves a lot more good food, great friends, and delicious fun in the future.

RISTORANTE GRANO

Piazza Rondanini 53

Roma 00186

+39 (06) 681 92 096

www.ristorantegrano.it

ESCAPES: Isola di Ponza, Italy -- Part I

Shhhhh. Don't let the word get out. Ponza, an island escape off the Mediterranean coast between Rome and Naples is a hidden gem -- at least as far as foreign tourists go. And we who've enjoyed the island for years for its unique natural beauty, its bountiful fresh seafood and local vegetables, its impossibly clean aqua waters, its open-air bars and restaurants with jawdropping views, its cute shops open until late...well, we'd like to keep it somewhat hidden.

Here, wandering the steep and winding streets, one hears almost exclusively Italian, with its various dialects, Neapolitan and Roman being the most pronounced. And this is refreshing in Italy, a country with so many gorgeous and enchanting spots that seem to have been discovered and sometimes overtaken by foreign tourists.

And what an enchanting and gorgeous spot it is. Ponza is one of the group of isole pontine, and along with its nearby sister island, Palmarola, offers some of the most beautiful landscape off the coast of the Italian peninsula.

Palmarola isn't really an inhabited island, but you can take giri (tours) around the island by day, stopping for swims along the way. There are plenty of places to drop your anchor, countless gorgeous coves and charming spots to share with other visitors, or in which to find oneself alone, in pace. Those arriving in sailboats can even stay the night in one of these beautiful coves, and wake up in the morning to an invigorating swim in crystalline waters teeming with tiny fish. On Palmarola, there are also a couple of lunch spots that serve up the fresh catch of the day, and do excellent pastas and specialty items. We indulged in a local zucchine in scapece (sauteed and cured in vinegar, garlic, and a bit of peperoncino), and an insalata di polpo, fresh-caught octopus salad, a classic antipasto from Italy's central coast on down to Sicily.

The Chiaia di Luna beach is a stunning stop-off, with various grottoes and a vista from the water where you can take in the vertiginous limestone cliffs that drop down into the sandy beach below. The sapphire water that meets the white cliffs offers a truly stunning juxtaposition of color and light.

When returning from an island boat trip, the thing to do is to share aperitivi with friends in the main piazza overlooking Ponza's harbor. Italian pre-dinner drinks, like the classic spritz, or any variation on alcohol or soda with a bitter like Campari or Aperol, are a must. The scene at our favorite, Bar Tripoli, is always lively -- and you're sure to make new friends with vacationing neighbors, sailors, and various ponzese (Ponza locals) as colorful as their island houses. Plus, the view at dusk is hard to beat.

EAT, PLAY, LOVE, Part 2: Cake & Compleanni

The first thing I ever cooked for Patrick was a birthday cake. We'd only met a few weeks earlier, in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. My friend Elizabeth came to me one day in May '99 and said, "I met your future boyfriend today" (which still makes me chuckle) -- he owned the Lavarapido, where she'd gone to do her laundry because it was one of few places in the city with dryers. Patrick was the owner: an American, she'd said, my age, cute, and very nice. And then one lazy Sunday afternoon at Stardust, the bar that would become our second home in Rome, I showed up for brunch and there he was outside the bar, sitting on a bench against an ivy-covered stone wall. He was wearing a blue t-shirt: I remember because it matched his eyes. (Blue still makes me think of Patrick). He was cute, yes -- but more importantly, he was incredibly sweet, with an infectious, full-body laugh. We instantly hit it off over our capacity for snark and jokey, sarcastic comments made at the expense of our new mutual friend Martin, the American bartender at Stardust who served us our drinks and lots of conversation to go with them. It was all in good fun, and it didn't take us long to assemble the beginnings of what would become our group of expats and colorful Italians that eventually formed our famiglia romana -- our Roman family. 

And so I found myself baking Patrick a birthday cake on June 10th,1999. I'd found a shop down the street from my apartment off the Campo de' Fiori that sold some specialty items from the U.S., including Betty Crocker cake mix and Philadelphia cream cheese. I wanted to make a retro, all-American cake of the kind my mother made for my birthdays in grade school: chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. Martin was having a gathering at his place in honor of Patrick's 27th birthday. But sadly, by the time 9:00 rolled around and I arrived proudly with cake in hand, Patrick had gone home. Seems he'd had a little too much to drink and had to call it a night before the sun went down. I remember being disappointed -- but it was just like Patrick to pull out all the stops, as early as possible, and occasionally burn out before the party got started!

A few weeks later, I hosted my first real dinner party in Rome (shades of many future nights to come). I'd invited Martin and Elizabeth, my English friend Monica and my Italian friend Federico, and Patrick. This was the summer before I started culinary school, and so while I enjoyed cooking, I was by no means yet a professional. (I hadn't even figured out how to work the oven in my apartment. It gave off a terrible odor every time I turned it on, and I found out the night of my dinner party that I needed to manually light the pilot light...so I'd basically been gassing everything I'd baked!) Anyway, that evening, I served a salad and a pasta, and had made a flourless chocolate cake, from scratch, for dessert. I served it with fresh local strawberries from the nearby hill town of Nemi, and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Or so I thought. I'd been running low on powdered sugar, so had picked up another pouch of it-- same brand, almost same packaging. After sprinkling a few slices of cake with the sugar I had on hand, I started on the new pouch. 

I served all the cake slices at one time, with a sweep of the wrist and a "buon appetito!" to all of my guests. We tasted the cake -- always a crowd-pleaser -- and everyone noted how delicious it was. But some guests said, "you know, this is interesting, it's really coming alive in my mouth." I thought it was a slightly strange descriptive for the dessert, but shrugged it off. And after a few more bites, Patrick said, "it's kind of like Pop Rocks. Don't get me wrong, it's tasty, but this cake is...frizzante," a word used to describe fizzy water, meaning sparkling or carbonated. At which point a light bulb went on in Martin's head, and he pulled me into the kitchen. "Show me the sugar you sprinkled on this cake," he said, and when I did, his eyebrows raised: "this is bicarbonato: it's baking soda!" We immediately broke out into hysterics, Martin falling against the kitchen door, hand covering his mouth, cackling. I was doubled over, holding my stomach in happy pain. "Why don't you sprinkle some baking soda on it?" became a running joke at my expense in Rome. And, I was 0 for 2 on cakes.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2003. It was the hottest summer anyone could remember, when people were literally dropping from the heat all over southern Europe. I was the executive chef of a place called Ristorante Cibus, in the same Trastevere neighborhood where we passed so many of our days and nights in Rome. Patrick and I had become pretty inseparable, and now I was working full-time in our "hood." He used to come visit me at the restaurant, passing through the air conditioned dining room back into the kitchen, where it was always 10 degrees hotter than anywhere else, with 8 burners, 2 ovens, and one huge hot water boiler for pasta -- all of which were constantly going during the 9-10 hours of our prep and dinner service. "Oh wow, it's hot in here!" is what he (and everyone) said upon entering the kitchen, as if it was some revelation to me, standing there melting! Sometimes Patrick would bring me an icy granita to help me cool off. Sometimes he'd show up when we were wrapping things up, after a night where I'd been sweating my butt off and he'd been cooling his off in a chair sipping Jack-and-Cokes next door. For his birthday that year, we decided that our group of friends would celebrate with a dinner at Cibus, and I would prepare a special menu for the group, as well as a very special gourmet birthday cake.

Patrick shared a birthday with our friend Caroline, and both were present to celebrate that summer. The meal itself consisted of what was surely a pasta dish and probably a beef fillet for the main course. I don't remember the details. But I definitely remember that I made a baked chocolate mousse cake with chocolate buttercream and ganache. And that cake? A winner! It was rich and chocolaty and light as air. It seemed the third time was a charm indeed.

This year on June 10th, I did not bake Patrick a birthday cake. I went out and bought the cream cheese and powdered sugar, got the hand mixer from a friend here in Rome, and tried to find chocolate cake mix -- just for old time's sake, and for our friend Caroline, who was back in Rome this year and spent her birthday with us, with our extended famiglia romana. But I couldn't bring myself to actually make the cake. Patrick would have been 39 years old on June 10th this year. Instead, he is forever 38 and 1/2. Patrick was born 3 months and 24 days before I was born, but now I'm older than he is, and I can't get my head around that concept.

This year on June 10th, instead of baking Patrick a birthday cake, we gathered our "Roman family" from near and far, to celebrate Patrick's life. Roman style.

We returned to Trastevere, our neighborhood full of wonderful memories. Stardust no longer exists, and though Patrick's laundromat is still there, sign and all, he sold it when he left Rome in '05 and it's now shuttered. But still, this will always be our neighborhood. So, we found a beautiful apartment around the corner from those spots. And we came together, from Rome, from all over Italy and Europe, from Malta, from the United States. We drank to Patrick's full life, we exchanged stories and memories, we saw videos and photos of those golden years in Rome that Patrick felt were some of the best of his life. We ate at one of our favorite neighborhood trattorias, we toasted to his life, we sang, we cried, but most of all we laughed, remembering Patrick's full-body guffaw and his capacity to laugh about everything, even in the face of tragedy. He was able to see the good in everyone and everything, which is what made Patrick so sweet, so refreshingly optimistic, and so beloved by so many.

In the whirlwind and haze of that Roman evening, which for me was surreal, I did notice something. Many people wore white, the complete opposite of the traditional black that signifies mourning, and a color that celebrates light and life. But more interesting still: even more people wore blue -- unwittingly, I think, but it was Patrick's color, and it was so fitting. He was the one thing so obviously missing from a birthday party he would have LOVED. But there we were, friends and family, gathered together to eat, drink, and celebrate the life of our lovely Patrick, dressed in colors of light and summer and Patrick's pool-blue eyes. He had, once again, pulled out all the stops and left the party early, way too early. But we celebrated on into the night, and to sunrise, in his honor.

Above, Patrick on his 30th Birthday in Rome (with a cake his Mom made and is presenting to him).

We love you, Patrick, and miss you terribly.

Auguri, auguri, auguri, from your Famiglia Romana...

Quick Bite: Cold Chocolate in Hot Weather

Chocolate. Cold. Cold chocolate treat. Cold chocolate treat with luscious heavy whipped cream. All this wonderfulness, and topped off with a crunchy cone-like wafer? There may be nothing better on a hot afternoon, for a sweet snack between meals, or for dessert after a leisurely lunch. Hell, chocolate cremolata is good any time. 

And serving up this Italian delicacy -- one that's fairly difficult to find on the Italian peninsula -- is the famous Cremeria Monteforte, conveniently tucked alongside the Pantheon in the centro storico of Rome. So what exactly is CREMOLATA? First of all, I'll tell you what it's not. It's not GREMOLATA, the combination of garlic, parsley, and lemon zest that traditionally tops osso buco. That, my friends, would not a tasty frozen treat make -- though a quick internet search found chefs, magazines, and various bloggers making this confusing mistake, preparing osso buco and shellfish dishes with "cremolata" -- which would also be bizarre and not good (veal chop with strawberry frozen treat, anyone?) 

OK...so again, what is cremolata? It's not gelato, it's not granita, and it's not sorbetto. It's usually made of fruit -- it's like a chunky granita or an unfiltered and "unspun" (not put into a gelato maker for even distribution of ice crystals) sorbetto. Lots of times you find pieces of fruit pulp in the cremolata. And sometimes, if you're lucky...it's made of deep, sweet-bitter, dark, luscious chocolate.

The Breakfast Club, Part 2

Continuing with my trip down memory lane (brought on by the "death" of my laptop and the subsequent retrieval of old files, including our brunch menus)...the Pasquino American Sunday Brunch in Rome...

Since the Pasquino restaurant, the spot we'd secured for our brunch venture, was a part of the landmark Pasquino English-language Cinema complex, we decided to play with the whole movie/Hollywood theme -- hence "The Breakfast Club" moniker (after the 1985 John Hughes flick).

Full disclosure: In a recent conversation with my friend Patrick, he reminded me of our original working title for our brunch spot, before we'd even secured a location: Daney's. That's right, like Denny's, but combined with Dana. The Americans in the group found it hilarious, and Patrick even printed out a terrible prototype of the logo, having doctored the bright yellow Denny's sign. I wanted nothing to do with "Daney's."

Grazie a dio I was able to talk them out of it and we moved on to a location with an already built-in theme with which to work. Can you imagine me, slinging hash in a hairnet at Daney's?! Holy crap.

Team Breakfast Club

We enlisted the help of my American roommate Leah, for kitchen help. Our friend Elizabeth pulled out her long-dormant waitress skills from her post-grad days. We brought in a couple of other Italian friends to help serve, and we put Peppe behind the bar, our "Calabrese Connection" whom we taught to mix a mean Bloody Mary. Martin helped in the kitchen, but felt his "talents" were best utilized in the front-of-house (he ended up doing a little of both). Gareth and Patrick were our friendly English-speaking male servers, helpfully flirting with our young female clientele. We realized we were still short-staffed in the kitchen though, so we turned to a young American college student named Paul, per Patrick's recommendation. (Us: "Does he have experience in the kitchen?" Patrick: "He sure looks like he could cook up some pancakes!") We arranged for an "interview" with young Paul to make sure he was rigorously vetted. We met at one of our favorite spots at the time, Ombre Rosse, next door to the restaurant (where we had something close to a group 'corporate account' bar tab). After being subjected to torturous questions from us ("How much bacon do you think you could handle cooking at one time?", "Quick! What are the components of a cobb salad?" and "How awesome are cats!?" [Gareth]), we hired the poor guy -- who, incidentally, ended up making a fine short order cook.

We got to work on our menu, knowing we wanted to include brunch staples that weren't available anywhere else: pancakes and bacon, eggs served a variety of ways with classic sides, bagels and lox (for me), sausage biscuits (for Martin), and that elusive Eggs Benedict, for us all. Bagels were nowhere to be found in Rome, so I had to make a few dozen of them at home every Saturday night (quite a task, as it turned out). In addition, I had a full baking roster to round out our menu: New York cheesecake, brownies, and a variety of other sweets and savories. We had several booze and broccoli Romano-fueled dinners over which we discussed menu items and their respective names. We decided to name each dish after a film or a movie reference. Some favorites? "O Bagel, Where Art Though" was fitting as a riff on the Coen Brothers' Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? but also because of the difficulty of finding a damned bagel in The Eternal City. And I still chuckle thinking about our name for a vegetarian sandwich: "Honey, I Left Out the Meat!" (Also hilarious were the various Italian pronunciations of these dish names by our Italian servers who had no clue about what they were ordering from the kitchen: "Cosa sono i pan-cake??" ) Even our drinks had some great names, including a "Fellini" instead of a bellini, and a "Something About Bloody Mary." Genius, no?

We secured our food orders through our various restaurant and green market connections. One of our biggest dilemmas was finding passable "American style" smoked bacon. We located a purveyor, but the bacon came packaged in whole slabs of pork belly, so we convinced Patrick to sweet-talk the owner of a nearby alimentari (food shop) into letting us use his meat slicer for the bacon. We had a built-in laundry service, as Patrick owned the Wash 'n Dry laundromat in the neighborhood. Gareth created CDs to provide our brunch soundtrack. We revved our publicity engines by plastering the city center with our brunch posters, and of course, utilized the ever-effective Italian method of raccomandazione: word-of-mouth.

And so, with all of these elements in place, we began the first real American Brunch in Rome, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, on April 1 (no joke), 2001. We did approximately 90 covers -- restaurant parlance for one customer's entire order, however many courses that may entail -- that first Sunday. We were a hit! We turned tables 2 to 3 times in those 4 hours. We were buzzing along. It wasn't perfect, but it was clear we had a great concept on our hands, and there was definitely an audience hungry for good, authentic brunch food prepared with love and served with a smile.

We celebrated afterward at our old haunt next door, Ombre Rosse -- a bunch of chairs gathered around a couple of small tables outside under the umbrellas in Piazza Sant'Egidio. If memory serves me correctly, we spent all of our week's profits on rounds of drinks for the remainder of the evening. We were exhausted. But it was gratifying, for sure. And fun. Really, really fun.

Stay tuned for part 3...

The Breakfast Club, Part 1

I'm one of many people who firmly believe that Sundays were made for brunch. It's a distinctly American concept (and one facet of food culture New York can be credited with perfecting), though brunch's popularity has spread around the globe. To wit: in places like Italy, where Sundays have traditionally been days of rest centered around a large family lunch, brunch is catching on. Kind of.

As an expat living in Rome, I spent a lot of Sundays with friends lounging at trattorias for some curative pasta and hair-of-the-dog vino. But every so often, we'd long for a good old American brunch: the savory-sweet combos of pancakes and bacon, the perfection of Eggs Benedict. And a bagel, for the love of the Lord, a bagel. Since Italians are so enamored of many American concepts -- Mickey Mouse, McDonald's, Hollywood -- it's easy to see why brunch, in all its yummy goodness, would also become an appealing "trend." What we witnessed all over Rome, however, was failed attempts at "American brunch" (quotation marks intentional). Versions of Italian Sunday lunch got slapped with the brunch label all over town. Those places that actually tried for traditional brunch menu items got lost in the execution of the dishes. Hell, even The Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood failed miserably. But time and again, my friends and I would hope against hope, dragging our hungover bodies into any place with a "Vero Brunch Americano" sign outside. 

This scramble for scrambled eggs took a pivotal turn for the worse one afternoon when we sat down at a pretty restaurant not far from Campo de' Fiori that boasted "Eggs Benedict" on its sign in the window.  After waiting for an hour and a half for what we'd decided must be the most perfectly-cooked eggs benny ever, we were served a piece of toast cut in half, topped with a hard-boiled egg and a slice of tomato. And fries. Upon further inquiry, our server admitted that the chef didn't really know what Eggs Benedict was, and that they were new to this whole brunch thing.

You don't say. Well, we put in a good effort trying to explain, in Italian, the finer points of eggs benny and well-cooked bacon and hash browns. Then we looked around the table. Wait a minute, we thought. We're sitting here with an American chef (me), an American who'd bartended for years (Marty), a guy who'd had some history in the service industry (Patrick), and one Brit who loooved bacon and would do anything for a proper Sunday brunch after a night slurping suds at Sloppy Sam's (more on that some other time: Gareth). Why not do our own American brunch in Rome?!

Through a connection of ours, we set up a meeting with one of the owners of the newly-opened Pasquino restaurant, a subterranean risto-lounge next door to the much-loved Pasquino English-language cinema. It had all the qualities we were looking for in a space: it was new, fun and modern, in a great location in the center of Trastevere (a great nabe in Rome, a mishmash of old-school Romans, international expats, and American students), and most importantly, it was closed on Sundays. We cut a deal to give a percentage of our brunch profits to the owners in exchange for the keys to the place on Sundays. And so, The Breakfast Club was born...