Jimmy and I pass many an evening on the back porch reminiscing upon great meals we've had while traveling. Some are obvious (the Guinness and lamb stew of Ireland, the curry of London), some were surprises (our favorite pizza spot? Paris!), some were so blissful that we stop and sigh when we remember. Our trip to Italy still inspires such moments of silent, blissful reverence.
Rome. I’m putting Rome down as the location for the best meal of my life. It came courtesy of Osteria Ponte Sisto in the Trastevere neighborhood, a place that we spent an hour walking to because it came highly recommended by our trusty friend Rick Steves. It was the only time I’ve let so much of my order up to the discretion of the restaurant owner and humbled myself enough to ask stupid questions like, “How do I eat this? Do I eat this part, too?” Glad I did. L‘antipasto: Fried artichoke. The owner told us that in Italy, you eat every bite, down to the stem. Delicious!
Primo: spaghetti with grilled mussels, octopus, and cherry tomatoes. Everything was so fresh! The flavors so vivid! Secondo: fried octopus. Yummy down to the last tentacle. And throughout the meal (which lasted over two hours), we sipped away a bottle of local white wine while sitting at a table on a quiet side street in Rome, lined with scooters and across from a small church. We spent the long walk home in culinary afterglow, walking arm and arm, smiling, and reminiscing on the meal we had just minutes earlier.Gelato. And, of course, the gelato! Before I knew the Italian words to ask where to find a bathroom or how to ask the price of an item, I knew how to ask for various kinds of gelato (in a cone, in a cup, two scoops, maybe three), how to ask for a small taste to sample, and how to ask which flavors “married” well for an ultimate flavor combination. (Food is a great motivator for my foreign language skills.) I used these phrases frequently -- most days I had three cones with two flavors on each. We were there eight days, so you do the math. My goal was to determine the ultimate flavor combinations for each time of day: a lovely breakfast gelato (espresso and dark chocolate), mid-day snack (mint-chocolate chip and stracciatella), and post-dinner cone for the stroll home (stracciatella and tiramasu). Rice-flavored gelato? Surprisingly delicious. To prove just how much walking we did in Italy, I ate nothing but gelato, pizza, pasta, and bread for a week and still came home a few pounds lighter. Who says eating well is not hard work?
