Eat-alian for Beginners

This is my first post on the food that I experience on my travels. The page has been under construction for quite a while and I'm so happy and excited to finally fill it out! I hope to share some of my insights on foreign cuisine and the entries will also serve as an excellent travel blog for me to reminisce upon. Let's face it, for people who love to eat, we remember our vacations on a meal-by-meal basis as much as we recall the tourist attractions.

Here's a little background on our trip -- it's the first full-on vacation with my wonderful/handsome boyfriend, Orin, and I. We stayed in four cities -- Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre and Venice. We also made day trips to Siena and Ghizzano, a little town in the Tuscan countryside. My overall impression of the food is that the Italians certainly follow the "eat seasonal, eat local" motto. It's not a "movement", it's a way of life. Even lettuce tasted more, well, lettuce-y. We visited several markets, and let me tell you, the abundance and variety of produce and deli goods would make any American yuppie green with envy. My only complaint is that, on many occasions, the restaurants can be very heavy handed with salt. Portions are noticeably smaller, but that's probably a good thing. 

Rome	Florence
Cinque Terre	Venice

We tried as much as we could to eat outside of the tourist areas to get a feel of "authentic Italian food". We definitely developed a case of the self-hating-tourist-itis. We would prowl for restaurants that weren't dominated by English speakers. I believe we were fairly successful in our quest to sample the foods that the natives enjoy. Make sure to do your homework ahead of time. Orin almost wore out his thumb flipping through our Lonely Planet and Rick Steve travel guides in search of the best places to eat (thank you, wonderful/handsome boyfriend!). We had our misses, but undoubtedly hit a few gems during the trip. Well, I'm going to stop the jabbering and start talking about the food!! A warning, if you're not hungry now, you will be by the end of the entry.

The place-setting at this little restaurant in Tuscany

Drinks

Everything looks and tastes better through the hazy eyes/tastes buds of the semi-buzzed. The options for alcohol in Italy are plentiful, and, especially if you buy local wines, cheap, too! Almost immediately, I noticed that Italian restaurants have a much smaller mark-up on wines, especially the local (even house-made) variety. Prices for foreign alcohol, however, can be at least 50% higher. You could get a full carafe (around full bottle) of house white or red for under €10. Granted, they weren't always great wines, but overall, they're on par with the quality at most American eateries. Each region has its specialty wine, some of which (such as prosecco and Chianti) are readily available in the States

Tuscan wine country

My fondest memories of Italy always include a glass of prosecco. We would buy a bottle from a corner store for around €5-8 and have an impromptu picnic by the canal or on a hill overlooking the city. In fact, it almost became a daily ritual for us. The only trouble was that often times, the stores didn't carry any chilled bottles so we had to plan ahead and buy a bottle to put in the fridge the day before. I would say that the prosecco was better than most champagne that I've had in the states. 

Sciacchetrà and grappa were two of our great discoveries on the trip. I had the two for the first time in Cinque Terre, five picturesque towns perched on the cliffs along the northwestern coast of Italy. The vineyards carved on the hills are stabilized by miles and miles of paved stone, rumored to outnumber the stones used to build the Great Wall (the proud Chinese in me thinks not!). The region specializes in white wines, and sciacchetrà is her lustrous crown jewel. They dry the grapes first to concentrate the flavor, making for a sweet dessert wine with a great smoky finish. When we went wine tasting in Groppo, the winery offered us biscotti for dipping. Bellissimo!!

Vineyards on the steep slopes of Cinque Terre

Grappa means "fire water" in Italian and it did not disappoint. The most comparable liquor that I could come up with is vodka, except grappa is mellower and doesn't sting as much. The burn going down is just as fiery as vodka, though, so don't let its deceptive smoothness fool you. It's great for sipping on the rocks or in mixed drinks, too. We brought home a bottle -- can't wait to open it!

Raboso and spritz are specialties of the Veneto region. The former is a sparkly red wine from the Venetian province. I'm generally not a red wine drinker, but raboso is light, tangy and so airy, it tickles your nose. Basically, it's a fuller bodied and sparklier rosé. I could drink that all day, everyday. Unfortunately, I don't really see anything like this in the states, and even in Italy, it's only available in the Veneto region.

Spritz, the manliest of masculine drinks, was another find for us. They're available all over northern Italy, but for some reason, we didn't give it a try until Venice, our last stop. Spritz is a mixed drink with sparkling wine (generally prosecco), a bitter liqueur (Campari being the most popular), topped with club soda and a slice of orange. Orin took to spritz like fish to water, but the bitterness of the drink never caught on with me. Orin and I would sit at an outdoor table, rock out with a spritz out (and our pinkies proudly protruding).

Two spritzes with our cichéti

On a very sad note -- recently, one of the towns of Cinque Terre (and our home base), Vernazza, suffered a catastrophic flash flood and mudslide. The lives of three residents were lost during the disaster and the town is buried under 14 feet of mud and debris. This is a tragedy of great magnitude for everyone, especially the residents and past visitors of the town. A website has been set up to collect donations to deal with the cleanup. Please open your hearts and wallets, even a little helps, to save this truly unique and enchanting place.

Coffee

I simply must create a separate section for coffee. After all, Italy is the home of espresso and cappuccino. On our first day, we got up before the crack of dawn to begin our tour of Rome. We saw a little cafe, walked in, and ordered "duo caffé". Being Americans, we expected to get two paper cups filled with watery coffee; instead, we got two little miniature teacups with the strong, viscous stuff. I took a sip of the heady brew and decided that the only way I could finish this was to down it in one gulp. Now I understand why Italians talk so fast, often times with wild, semi-controlled hand gestures. Gradually, we fell in love with our morning ritual of standing at the counter and imbibing espresso from these toy-ish looking cups.

Eventually, Orin and I graduated to cappuccinos, and not the soy latte variety, either. They only serve these things one way and that's with whole milk or cream. Let's face it, when I downed one to two gelati per day, a little extra from my coffee wouldn't kill me. Orin looked up this place on Lonely Planet near the Pantheon called Sant'Eustachio il Coffé and boy, did it live up to its name as the best coffee in Rome. Not only were the cappuccinos great, we also chanced on their coffee granita with cream. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically a strong coffee slushy topped with real whipped cream. I have never seen Orin lick his spoon like that in my life. We were so busy savoring our delight, we didn't even remember to take pictures! Oh well, gives us another reason to revisit the joint!

Isn't that sweet?

Meats

Italy is made for carnivores. We had some of the most delicious cured meats on our journey. The delis are filled with dozens of types of sausages, hams and other unnamed animal parts. The vast selection is dazzling. I still remember going into a shop on the edge of Campo de' Fiori in Rome and my nostrils assailed by the smoky/sweet aroma of the dozens of prosciutto hams dangling from the ceiling. 

It's almost as if heaven is crying tears of pork

Aside from prosciutto, which is high on the favorites list for both my boyfriend and me, we also sampled some less known cured meats -- a bologna made of tongue, mortadella and porchetta. Mortadella is a soft pork sausage studded with fat and pistachios. We saw THE one mortadella sausage to rule them all at a deli in Rome. The thing literally weighed more than me (and that's post 1.5 gelato per day and enough pasta to kill a horse) and taller, too. Porchetta could only be described as a giant seasoned bacon roll roasted to perfection. My only other encounter with this cut was at the farmer's market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, where Roli Roti serves up a decadent sandwich loaded with the stuff. You cannot imagine the joy on my face when I saw porchetta in the deli case.

Adding Orin in the pic for some perspective

We were warned not to order steaks in Italy because they tend to overcook it. In retrospect, I feel it was a great decision -- not only were steaks the most expensive items on the menu, Italians are better at making stews than cooking things to medium rare. One could avoid sit-down restaurants and still eat very well, not to mention economically, at the hundreds of delis dotted across any Italian city. A little prosciutto, a few shavings of aged pecorino, good bread from a bakery, and a bottle of wine to top it off, that's how kings live!

Porchetta, salumi and prosciutto

Seafood
Italy has an extremely long coast line so the seafood is bound to be good. Our minds were just as open as our stomachs to sample never before tried bounties from the sea. Rome and Florence are inland, so it wasn't until Cinque Terre and Venice were we able to experience the full array of seafood that Italy had to offer. The ingredient on the top of our list was the sardine. I never liked the little fishes much due to their overpowering brininess. I kept hearing that, somehow, the locals are able to make these little suckers into culinary delicacies. Well, we tried, and tried and tried, but no matter how much lemon juice the tiddlers swam in, nothing could mask their pungent "oceany-ness". After three tries, we finally gave up.

First try, with lemon,  oil & parsley

Second try, oil poached  w/ lemon

Third try, prepared the same way as the first

For my birthday, I had a seafood feast at Belforte, a family ran restaurant situated in an abandoned lighthouse overseeing the ocean. We shared the five course seafood antipasti (two of the courses are try #2 and #3 for the sardines) and I had the seafood mixed grill as my main course. The reason why I didn't regret my decision not to order steaks in Italy was that all fish (excluding crustaceans and mollusks) that I've had were overcooked. Admittedly, I am picky when it comes to fish -- I either prefer it raw or on the under-done side. When fish is overcooked, it sticks to my teeth when I chew it and I care tremendously for good texture for my food. Despite our little textural problem, the seafood all tasted fresh and the preparation was simple, so not to overwhelm the delicate fish.

Mixed seafood platter with squid, langoustines,
bass (or was it cod?),  and peepee shrimp

My favorite seafood dish was the stewed octopus at another cliff restaurant in Vernazza called La Torre with a stunning terrace vista to boot. The stew only had tentacles and they weren't chewy at all! As with most Italian dishes, the octopus was cooked in a tomato base and had some potatoes and peas. It was so good! At the same restaurant, we ordered another Cinque Terre specialty, the stuffed mussels. I was vastly disappointed in the dish -- it was unbearably salty and all I could taste were these salty, fishy lumps of bread stuffed inside the muscles. I'm generally a big fan of the bivalves and was sad that I didn't like it.

The octopus stew

Stuffed mussels

Pastas

The only complaint about the pasta in Italy was that there wasn't enough of it. We had a bit of pasta for almost every meal. White sauce, red sauce, pesto sauce, you name it, we tried it. And the pastas -- penne, spaghetti, linguini, pappardelle, lasagna, ditalini, rigatoni, trofie and well, you get the idea. The varieties that that I saw on the menus and in the markets were simply stunning. And they knew how to cook it, too -- al dente and not drowning in sauce!! Too bad the portions were not Cheesecake Factory sized (although, on second thought, most likely a good thing).

A stall hawking every know pasta under the sun

One of the most unique pastas that we encountered was the trofie in Cinque Terre. It's a specialty of the Ligurian region and typically paired with pesto, another trademark of the province. The shape of the pasta is designed for the pesto sauce to cling to, and the texture is firmer than other pastas. The pesto sauce was more floral and creamy than the versions that I've tried elsewhere. Orin was hooked on the stuff. The pesto lasagna was awesome too. Unlike traditional lasagnas, the pesto version in Cinque Terre doesn't use any ricotta or even mozzarella, just layers of pasta smothered with that aphrodisiac-like pesto sauce.  

Trofie with pesto sauce

Pesto lasagna

My personal favorite was the squid ink pasta that we had for lunch at a little spot in downtown Manarola called Trattoria il Porticcio. The plate was loaded with seafood and the pasta looked to be homemade. For those of you that are a little intimidated by the thought of pasta colored with squid ink, the ink is purely for aesthetics and the pasta doesn't taste different from regular pasta. The contrast between the ebony noodles and the sauce was striking. The tomato sauce tasted like it was drenched with sunshine and tied the whole dish together. And the best part, with our Rick Steves guide book, we received two complimentary glasses of Sciachetrà!

Squid ink pasta

One thing that I've noticed is that Italians don't add everything and the kitchen sink into their pastas. The dishes generally have less than three ingredients so you can taste each element. And they use discretion when it comes to saucing the pasta too -- just enough to coat the pasta so you can still taste the noodles. One of the great examples was the mushroom pasta we had for lunch at Pasticceria Ferretti, a homey little spot in Peccioli. We chanced upon the town on our drive through the Tuscan wine country. The dish, literally, only contained pasta, mushrooms and a little cheese on top. With top notch, fresh ingredients, the chef didn't need to put lipstick on a pig, so to speak.

Freshly made pasta with mushrooms

Fresh pasta with beef and mushroom

Pizzas

The pizzas here are almost uniformly thin crust so sorry, you deep dish fans. Being from San Francisco, we are a bit spoiled by the quality of food so I wasn't actually all that wowed by the pies that Italy had to offer. Don't get me wrong, it's not Little Caesars, but the top pizzerias in SF certainly can go toe to toe with popular places in the Italian cities that we visited. 

Similar to the pastas, the pizzas in Italy tend to be simpler and not loaded with too many toppings and even a bit sparse on the cheese. Our favorite pizza was from Pizzeria Dar Poeta, situated close to our apartment in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome. This was the only place that always had a crowd waiting for a table despite being a neighborhood with abundant eating options. We agonized over what to order from the extensive menu while we waited. We settled on a potato pizza for me and a zucchini and spicy sausage variety for Orin. As you can see from the picture on the left, I was a bit eager to get a taste while the boyfriend had the discipline to take pictures before digging in.

Potatoes, pesto and cherry tomatoes

Zucchni, spicy sauce with tomato sauce

We actually didn't have a lot of pizzas while in Italy due to the lure of the other menu items. In my experience, they are certainly the best value to fill your stomach and still leave enough money to get a carafe of wine. Look for pizzerias with wood burning ovens (the difference is immense) and order pies with around 3-4 toppings so you can enjoy each ingredient to its fullest.

Cichéti

I must devote a full section to this unique Venetian version of the tapas bar. Since there are no cars in Venice, the locals have a tradition of walking from bar to bar, sampling a few pieces of finger food, washing it down with a spritz, and moving onto the next watering hole. This is the most affordable and delicious way to fill your stomach in a city notorious for overpriced tourist traps serving reheated food to day-trippers. Take a chance and wonder down a few dark and narrow alleyways, away from the hustle and bustle of the main attractions and you'll find refuge in a neighborhood joint filled with locals chatting, smoking, drinking and munching on cichéti. 

Wide range of selection

Cichéti fare generally consists of food served on napkins or toothpicks. Due to the popularity of these bars and the dearth of seating, most patrons eat and drink while standing near the bar, where the action is. Most cichéti items are simply pieces of toast topped with various meats, cheeses and marinated veggies/tapenade. We've also sampled pieces of fried fish and chicken kebabs. Our favorite place, by far, was All' Arco, near the Rialto fish market. The father and son tandem that owns the bar were personable and efficient. It was a joy to see them whip up unique creations depending on what was available at the market that day. Everything they served was good. The kicker was generally the dab of marinated veggies topping the bite-sized morsels that lent the food a sophisticated taste and aesthetic. If you're lucky enough to get a table outside, with a few pieces of cichéti and a bottle of raboso or a spritz, you can watch the world go by and know true contentment.

Our favorite cichéti bar

Delicious and portable

Open Air Markets

Some of the most memorable sights from Italy, for me, at least, were the open-air markets. Every city, from a real metropolis like Rome down to small villages, has at least one. Italians take great pride in their food, and that starts at the source -- fresh, local and seasonal produce. Vendors selling pastas, cheese, baked goods and cured meats/fish, even flowers, round out the bunch. The quality of the produce is vastly superior to the fruit and veggies shrink wrapped in the supermarkets, and cheaper too. My favorites were  Campo de' Fiore market (Rome) and San Lorenzo market (Florence). In fact, I made a feast for Orin and me from the bounty we gathered in Florence. We felt like true Italians!

Fresh produce	Dried herbs	Cured meats
Cheeses	Spreads and jams	Colorful flowers

I can't stop gushing about the quality of the fruit that we picked up from the markets. I tried cactus fruit (or Indian pears) for the first time. I ended up with tiny splinters all over my hand, but it was worth it to satisfy my curiosity. I also bought some plums. They were so sweet and flavorful, and most sellers had a least five different varieties of plums for sale. 

Cactus fruit, pretty seedy looking

The San Lorenzo market has an indoor area with many delis and take-out eateries. It was most certainly a delight buying from these deli vendors. They really laid on the "help me help you" charm and gave us free samples of the cheese and meats. We didn't even need to eat breakfast before heading over. For those of you that are a bit squeamish, beware, there's nothing shrink wrapped and pretty about the butcher counters. The glass cases display the full glory of hooves and other unnamed offal bits. For a little Chinese girl like me, though, it was a candy store. Orin took in the sights like a champ, too.

I must put in a special mention of a small, almost food truck-like vendor called Il Lampredottaio near the San Lorenzo market that sells panini filled with tripe or lamb bits. At €3 a pop, I can unashamedly admit that it was, hands down, my favorite meal in Italy. First, they fish out a piece of tripe out the giant cauldron and cut it into small pieces. Then, they take a crusty ciabatta square and slice it in half, dipping the top half in the braising liquid of the tripe and stuff the meat inside. A little green sauce and a dash of hot sauce later, voila! I could eat just that and nothing else in Italy and be a very happy girl. Even Orin grudging admitted the sandwich was tasty after I coerced him to take a bite. If he didn't know what the meat was, I bet he would have asked for seconds!

My own slice of heaven

Italian version of a food truck

Gelati
I'm saving the best for last. Even with the wide array of sweets to select from, with my marathon a mere two and a half weeks away, I tried to limit myself to one dessert per day. With the balmy weather, gelato was tough to beat. No matter the time of day, you're certain to see fellow pedestrians licking away at their gelato. At a neighborhood gelateria, I drew first blood our first night in Rome. These treats are generally very affordable, although they're not as generous with the scoops as most American creameries. Expect to pay around €2-3 for two flavors, cone included. The clerks always throw in a waffle chip on the house. Most places have around 15-20 flavors, usually seasonal. 

Hazelnut and pistachio flavors

In smaller shops, the flavors are similar to the selection in their American counterparts, although I didn't venture beyond my comfort zone to try any of the more weird flavors. I did, however, discover fior del leche, which is basically milk-flavored ice cream. I liked its simplicity and it complimented other flavors that I paired with it. Each container of ice cream generally has the main flavoring ingredient on display along side so it's easy to tell what is what, even for us non-Italian speakers. They generally allow you to try a flavor before you make your selection, but they aren't nearly as generous with the number of tastings as gelaterias state side. Even if you just randomly point to a flavor, chances are, you'll enjoy the result.

Fin

The concept of "Italian food" is a kind of misnomer due to the heterogeneous nation of the cuisine from region to region. Each town has its own specialty and people are fiercely loyal to the local cuisine. I remember remarking to Orin that it was odd that we rarely ever encounter restaurants that serve non-Italian food. Even though, at a glance, eateries in any given city (especially the more provincial areas) offer similar menus, when you slow down and take time to linger over the food, you'll notice the subtleties and savor the pride that went into making each dish.

I experienced so many new sights and tastes on my culinary journal across northern Italy. The country is steeped in tradition, especially when it comes to food. Even in a modern world increasingly dominated by processed and mass production food, slow food still has a strong foothold in the hearts and minds, not to mention stomachs, of the national psyche. However, with globalization and Italy's increasing dependence on tourism, the institution is slowly eroding. With every traditional deli that slowly and painstakingly churns out house-made, traditional culinary delights, there's a shop across the way that serves reheated pizza. I hate to sound like a hippie, but I hope, as tourists, we eschew the norm, venture off the beaten path, and preserve the food heritage of Italy.

Happy eating!