SPAGHETTI ALLA CARBONARA DI CARCIOFI
Listen, I'm not going to sugar coat this for you because I know you're already really jealous of the week I spent in Rome. Yes, the historical sites helped me transcend space and time. Yes, the piazzas and winding, narrow streets had that perfect paint-chippy authenticity. Of course the people were enthusiastically kind, loud, and gesture-y. But the food: effing amazing.
Now, like I mentioned in my previous post (where you can see some photos of the space/time transcending monuments and paint-chippiness), there's a lot of crappy food in Rome and it can be quite tricky to tell the difference between a restaurant dishing out frozen pizzas to tourists or making homemade pasta and ragu. While in other cities proximity to tourist hot spots and kitschy decor might be dead giveaways that the place is a dud, that's not necessarily the case in Rome. The landlord of the apartment we rented directed us to places I would normally disregard, but truly had that great blistered pizza crust everyone is searching for in life. So, location, decor, and prices really aren't reliable indicators of whether a restaurant will disappoint or amaze. I was left to develop my own investigatory process that mostly involved snooping around and peering over the shoulders of diners to catch a glimpse of their crusts and sauces.
If you're going to Rome, my best advice for choosing a restaurant is to look at plates, and be prepared to feel fooled from time to time. But, when you find a place that gives you exactly what you're looking for - freshly made pasta, homemade sauces, high quality ingredients, a wood burning pizza oven - don't be afraid to keep going back. I mean, why waste your time on a wild hunt for another pizza/pasta place that's just as good? And, by going back to a little place that you love, you're probably going to find the same host and waitstaff will remember you and your order, making your next experience seem even more local than your first. If you have a short amount of time in Rome, just go immediately to Hostaria Farnese, on a side street between the Campo di'Fiori and Piazza Farnese.
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