The Food Maven Diary
[Archives]

[Previous Entry] [Diary Home] [Next Entry]

03/01/2002 Archived Entry: "Las Vegas For Priests"

I always come home from a trip with good stories. This time I came back from my vacation in Italy with good quotes. Here’s the first:

“Rome is Las Vegas for priests,” says Iris Carulli, who you may remember was my assistant, confidant, and muse for nearly eight years and until two years ago.

Iris moved to Rome last year. She has always loved Italy. She lived there all during the 1970s and into the early ‘80s, which is why when one refers to a TV sitcom or popular song of that era, Iris always says “I don’t know what you are talking about. I was living in Italy then.” (Boy, does she love saying that!) She went to Venice initially, for graduate school, where she met a man and married him. She had her son, Joe Micelli, in Siracusa, Sicily, where his father was born. After graduating high school in New York, Joe went back to Siracusa and his father. In Rome, Iris is closer to her son than in New York, which she likes, but the real reason she lives in Rome is that after she left my employ, New York wasn’t happening for her the way she wanted it to. She became restless.

Now she has a small, very old and atmospheric apartment on a tiny street off Via Giulia, in the historic center of Rome. On her corner is a church designed by Rafael. There are fancy antique shops on Via Giulia. Around the corner is the Piazza Farnese with it’s fabulous bathtub-shaped fountains and the exquisite Palazzo Farnese, which is considered the most magnificent Renaissance building in Rome. Its façade and cornice are by Michelangelo, for Pope Paul III, who was a member of the Farnese family. The building is now the French embassy and at night the French keep the lights of the upper floor of the Palazzo on so the public can enjoy a glimpse of the Annibale Carracci murals decorating the walls. I never fail to look up.

The Campo dei Fiori is just beyond the Piazza Farnese. This is the square that is an open-air market every morning. Romans enjoy saying it’s not like it used to be, but it is still a wonderful thing to visit and to have in your neighborhood. Even in February, which is the dead end of the winter in Italy, it was filled with fruits, and vegetables, and flowers, and activity. I am looking forward to seeing it in June, when there will most certainly be more produce to tickle the senses.

Around the Campo are excellent food shops and cafés, and a restaurant that I am particularly fond of, La Carbonara. Locals and some of my well-traveled American friends say it has become too touristic. I hadn’t been there in more than 20 years. I had to decide for myself. We had a wonderful meal here. And as Iris, Bob Harned, and I were sitting at a table outside, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and sun, an American couple sat down next to us and the wife commented that she had never seen such a great table of vegetable antipasti. They seemed to be strangers to Rome, but it ends up they were hardly regular American tourists, or strangers to Italian antipasto buffets. They were living in Bologna, the husband being the head of a junior-year-abroad program for an American university.

La Carbonara’s antipasto buffet is, indeed, a delicious way to start your meal here. I suppose you could even make it a meal if you could resist the rest of the menu. I couldn’t and didn’t.

There were artichokes cooked Roman style, whole with mint and garlic, their stems standing at a attention while their heads rested in the aromatic oil. There was the yellow-green cauliflower that is particular to Rome, called broccolo Romano. The baccala, salt cod, baked with potatoes and tomatoes, as I do it myself, was as good as I do it myself, which is always my biggest compliment. The spinach frittata was particularly good, actually fabulous. The Roman eggs are a deep yellow color and as rich tasting as they look. The spinach was vibrant green without a trace of that awful metallic quality that spinach can take on. And in Rome frittatas are thick and cooked slowly, giving them a custardy texture, very unlike Neapolitan frittatas that are more often thin and springy, cooked quickly over high heat. There were roasted red peppers gratinéed with breadcrumbs, baked onions topped with breadcrumbs, zucchini with breadcrumbs, vinegary marinated rounds of zucchini, mushroom salad, sweet and sour pearl onions, and stringbeans dressed with olive oil. That’s not all, just what we ate.

Naturally, at a place called La Carbonara, I had to order pasta Carbonara, the Roman specialty made here with penne instead of spaghetti. The deep yellow eggs of the egg and cheese and pancetta sauce were curdled very slightly, but it was delicious, and the curds were so soft my palate didn’t notice, only my eyes. The Amatriciana, another Roman pasta specialty, spaghetti sauced with pancetta, onion, tomatoes and pecorino grating cheese, was also very good. The pasta hit of our three, however, were the paper-thin, ricotta and spinach-filled ravioli dressed with nothing but butter and sage. Simple and sensationally well-executed.

The pasta portions were large for Italy, so Iris and Bob were ready to call it quits after that. But I insisted they sit with me while I ate some tripe in tomato sauce, another Roman specialty. In the end, Iris actually shared the tripe with me – it was irresistible -- while we all shared a plate of artichokes alla Giudea, the fried artichokes “Jewish style.” The two large ones we were served, with crisp outer leaves and soft interiors giving out to crisp edges, just as they should be, ended up to be the best ones of several we ordered on the trip.

With a small carafe of light, but perfectly fine house wine, and an extra tip, which is sometimes necessary these days in Italy, the meal cost about $20 a person.

Not a bad introduction to a stay in Rome, and it continued to be a dream for several days, with Iris as our guide.

She worries that she hasn’t accomplished enough in the year that she’s been living in Rome, but I pointed out to her that in that year she has learned her way around the city, practically as well as a native, and that she certainly knows the art, architecture, museums, restaurants, and shops better than most. I mean you can’t walk by a church without Iris telling you what art treasures are inside, or whose crypt you can find there, etc.

She is, indeed, available as a guide. She has a three-hour minimum for one to four people. If you book her for the whole day, you must include her in lunch, but who wouldn’t want Iris’ company, her insight, her information about Rome? Her beauty! Her rates are very reasonable, but you'll have to work that out with her personally. We've discussed it, and researched it, and, without getting into specifics, the going rate when booking a guide through a hotel would be double or nearly double what Iris charges. If you want to make the most of a trip to Rome, write to Iris Carulli at imcarulli@hotmail.com.

I have plenty more to report on Rome, Naples, Salerno, and the several places in Basilicata and Puglia that the three of us traveled to with my friend Cecilia Bellelli Baratta. Little by little, I’ll be reporting it here.

In case you are interested to know what Iris means by "Rome is Las Vegas for priests" it's that the Eternal City is where priests from all over the world come to play. How? They can go to a church on every block, visit the Vatican and it's incredible museums. And, well, who knows what priests do with their spare time? I can tell you this, there are priests everywhere you go in Rome.

Osteria La Carbonara
Piazza Campo de’ Fiori, 23
Tel. 68.64.783