Dining in Roma
Not going to lie, one of the biggest aspects of Roma I was looking forward to the most was the food! I love Italian food in the US. From a pepperoni slice and some garlic knots at a pizza parlor to traditional penne alla vodka at an Italian restaurant, Italian food never fails to lift my spirits and satisfy my appetite! From what I learned in class, I know traditional Italian food is extremely different from Americanized Italian food but I still could not wait to see for myself!
La cena (dinner) in Rome is unique because of its involved and multifaceted meal structure. There are six main parts with new dishware per step and a variety of foods. These are the parts briefly:
- Antipasto – This is the US equivalent of an appetizer with healthier and less decorated (no condiments) foods. The antipasto consists of cold cuts such as prosciutto (cut of pig thigh) and formaggio (cheese). Bread is also on the table for this part but, unlike in the US, you will not have butter or olive oil for the bread. That is an Americanized tradition!
- Primo Piatto – This is usually some kind of pasta dish – anything from spaghetti con pomodoro (with tomato) to penne alla vodka to, my new favorite pasta dish, pasta carbonara (seriously if you like bacon, this from Italy will make you cry it’s so good!). The dishes are also smaller than in the US, which is good because there’s more food to come!
- Secondo Piatto – It is at this point I realized that filling up on bread during the antipasto is unwise. The second piatto is about as heavy as the primo piatto. It consists of meat and a side, usually vegetables and/or potatoes. The meat includes pollo (chicken), miale (pig), meatballs, pesce (fish), etc. One of my biggest surprises to come from the secondo piatto is a new-found love for zucca (pumpkin).
- L’insalata – Unlike in the US, the salad comes after the main course. Salads in Italy are not overly dressed and convoluted – just lettuce, tomatoes, and mozzarella for the most part. You also dress the salad with basilica, oil, salt, pepper and sometimes honey. I still feel strange putting salt on my salad, but I am used to it!
- Frutte (Fruit) and Dolce (Sweets) – I am not a sweets person so this is the part I thought I would dread the most. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is enjoyable. My host mom is more than happy to feed my grape obsession and I have become more open to trying new sweets. I even have some new favorite fruits such as plums and melons.
- Il Caffè – Finally we end with a quick coffee (Cappuccino, Macchiato, Lungo, etc.) of some kind. The mugs are comically small compared to US sizes but no one complains! I have tried coffee here several times but am still not a coffee person. I usually have my classmates laughing with how much sugar I dump in mine because I do not like the bitter taste.
With this extensive list, you probably think dinner takes forever…which is why Italians rarely use the whole system, from my experience. With my host family, we usually have a combination of the first four and fruit at the end. My host mom explained to me that modern Italian women are too busy to make traditional Italian meals, such as pasta from scratch. My guess is that therefore we do not do the full dinner, usually ending dinner at a reasonable one hour. Restaurants are a bit more traditional, with all the options available. However, this depends on what you pay for from the menu. When our professor takes us out, we have close to the full dinner but when us money-conscious students go out, we keep it simple at just a primo or secondo piatto.
Another important part of a traditional Italian dinner is a glass of vino (wine). Since I am nineteen, it is legal for me to drink alcohol in Italy, so I had no problem giving it a try. The first night, I had my family snickering with the facial expressions I made as I tried it. It was strange because although I was indifferent to the taste, I kept going back for more…every night. Now I enjoy it, with my host mom making the occasional joke that she hopes my real parents won’t be upset that she got me into wine! I still don’t know if I prefer bianco (white) or rosso (red)! Another thing, wine in Italy is far less expensive, which is why this is possible every night – a good bottle of wine is able five euros.
It seems to me that the grand dinner makes up for the…unimpressive breakfast, to put it nicely. Il colazione (breakfast) is usually some sort of sweet or pastry with a coffee. In Italy, lunch is considered the most important meal of the day and dinner, as you saw, is complicated so I suppose breakfast just got the short end of the stick (or maybe I am just biased because I do not like sweets nor coffee). I usually have toast (which is adorably half the size of a US bread slice), some fruit, or nothing. It is enough to get me through my commute and first class, but it also makes me miss my homemade breakfast sandwiches, Dartmouth omelets, and a good box of chocolate milk.
Since I close to ravenous after my first class (a lengthy two hours), I look forward to il pranzo (lunch). I try to eat somewhere different every day, but my favorite places are quickly making themselves known. Sometimes I have a panino (sandwich) with prosciutto and some sort of formaggio. Even abroad, sandwiches are my go-to! Other times, I will have a small pizza, which is much smaller and squarer than in the US. Still packs a punch of flavor though! When I want to treat myself or go out to a restaurant with friends, I will spend more for pasta. This is how my love for pasta carbonara grew! Finally, after lunch and my afternoon class, I occasionally have gelato (ice cream) before going home. My favorite flavor is Stracciatella, which is similar but better than vanilla and chocolate chip in the US.
Although my food experience in Rome has been amazing as I expected, it is not a bed of roses all the time. One thing that caught me off guard was my inability to find my previous favorite Italian dish, chicken piccata. I was really looking forward to trying it in Italy but, after going four weeks without finding it, I finally asked my host family about. To my surprise, they said such a dish does not exist in Italy, since Italians would never mix their pasta with chicken like that. I was a bit sad, but happy to finally have an answer. Another thing, it is a bit annoying to pay for an expensive dish and only get about half, maybe even less, of the food I expected. Usually the quality makes up for this but other times the food is just okay. The biggest gripe I have with my dining experience in Roma is paying for water at restaurants. It seems dramatic but this aggravates me to no end, because, not only am I not used to this but also there are free public fountains throughout Roma! What is stopping an employee from simply filling up the fancy bottle they give us with tap water?! On top of that, you must pay a table fee which increases with the number of people at the table. I guess not having to pay a tip makes up for this, but it still bothers me to no end.
All in all, my dining journey in Roma, and other places I have been to such as Firenze, Bologna, and Orvinio, has been as wonderous as I expected. I have tried many new foods and they have helped me embrace the culture. Food is such a big part of the culture here that I could not even cover all of it, such as Italy’s cocktail party equivalent called aperitivo. The biggest thing I would like to take back to the US is family dinner time. I enjoy bonding with my host family over dinner, and it makes me wish I did this more with my real family. I can not wait to try more dishes in the future!
-Ciao, Maxine 🙂
