Tamarind and Thyme

I couldn’t miss a trip to the Campo De’ Fiori. Every morning, Mondays to Saturdays, Rome’s oldest market comes alive in the square. It was a little smaller than I expected and alongside the beautiful food stalls were also those selling cookware, scarves, cheap jewelry, etc. Clearly it was a mixed bag of a market. Still, I loved browsing the food stands full of both touristy pastas and jars and fresh produce for the locals.

I bought a little punnet of wild strawberries as I’d never tasted this delicacy before. They weren’t cheap but they’re hard to find in London. These little gems were so juicy and full of strawberry essence – they weren’t the sweetest strawberries I’d ever encountered but their flavour more than made up for it. Apart from these strawberries, we also left with a bagful of tiny sun dried tomatoes and some candied dried cherries. And we came back on our last morning and I walked away with a big chunk of pecorino romano too.

But that market wasn’t the only thing I wanted to see in this square; at one of the corners, there’s a fantastic bakery: Forno Campo de’ Fiori.

In the photo above, there’s the main bakery, with the ovens and bakers, through the door with the white awning and the main shop under the big Forno sign. The two are connected and bread fresh out of the oven is brought over to the shop when supplies run low, which is often. To the left of main building, there’s another shop selling sandwiches made with their gorgeous bread.

When I say bread, I really mean pizza. Pizza al taglio (pizza by the slice) to be precise. Long sheets of thin pizze are brought over to the main shop and a couple men there slice off as much as you require, weigh it and wrap it up in brown paper, giving that and a bill to you to pay at the final counter. Simplicity seems to be the rule here with the pizze ranging from super simple to those with a topping or two. We started with the simple and most famous of the pizze here – their pizza rossa and pizza bianca. For a slice of each suitable for a generous snack for two, I paid about €3.

Their pizza rossa was just out of the oven (we watched as a baker dumped a long slab of it onto the counter) and we immediately ripped open the paper as soon as we were out of the shop, eager to have a taste. Wow. Wow wow wow. The thin bread was highly flavoured with olive oil and topped with a deceptively simple, fresh and sweet tomato sauce (I bet I will never be able to replicate that at home). The base was crispy while still having a good chew here and there and I could have eaten a whole slab of it there and then.

The pizza bianca was very plain in comparison though this doesn’t mean it was any less of a pizza. There’s just the base, salt and plenty of olive oil on top and without the weight of the tomato topping, it’s free to puff and bubble as it bakes. Again it had a great flavour and a good moist chew with no toughness. This slice wasn’t just out of the oven but it was still excellent at room temperature.

On our last day in Rome, I couldn’t just stop into the market without making another visit to the forno. This time, more of the pizza rossa (I fell in love the first time) and instead of the pizza bianca, we opted for the pizza with mushrooms and cheese as this was fresh from the oven on this second visit. There’s nothing wrong with these more “complex” pizze – in fact, this was downright delicious!

Apart from their pizze, there are pies, pastries and biscuits. We can vouch for their occhi di bue (bull’s eyes biscuits) – rounds of biscuity pastry filled with jam – we had a few of these as Blai love them. I did have one miss here though… a flat tile of cakey biscuit studded with pine nuts – I think it was made of chestnut flour. I wasn’t keen on its strong, almost smokey, flavour and was the only thing we failed to finished. (If you do have any further information on this pastry, I’m keen to know more!) Anyway, there was nothing wrong with it – it just wasn’t to our taste. I am, however, a big fan of their pizze!

Forno Campo De’ Fiori
Campo De’ Fiori, 22
00186 Rome, Italy

Trastevere is a charmingly picturesque area in Rome to the west of the river Tiber but still easily accessible from the city centre by foot. I was keen to try a restaurant there; when we were there at the beginning of the month, there were very few tourists around and Trastevere felt like “old” Rome. Dan from Essex Eating recommended a couple trattorias in the area and that’s how we found ourselves at Da Augusto one lunchtime.

The trattoria was a little tricky to find. When you get to Piazza de’ Renzi, there’s one clearly marked restaurant…that wasn’t Da Augusto. There’s no sign for the trattoria but there is a menu posted up – and this was the only hint of the restaurant (except for when it’s packed, of course, with tables spilling into the square). The photo below is what the place looked like when we left.

The menus are handwritten and are in Italian on one side and English on the other, the only hint that tourists do find this trattoria. When we were there, we were the only tourists – the rest of the tables were full of Roman families, single businessmen, couples meeting for lunch. We weren’t any less welcome though; our waiter was very keen to practice his English on us. There’s loads of character to this trattoria: it’s rammed with chattering Italians, the plain wooden tables are packed close together and are topped with just a large piece of paper, and it’s clearly a family run place and I love it more for that. From this environment, we expected a home style lunch and we were not disappointed.

Ravioli was available the day we were there and we opted to split a dish of it to start. There was no indication of what the ravioli filling would be but it turned out to be ricotta and spinach between delicious thick homemade pasta sheets. We were given the option of meat sauce or tomato and basil with our ricotta and we chose the former. What came out was a tomato sauce and we found a telltale shred of tripe within it – I think this was the sauce from trippa alla romana! Waste not, want not. Fresh and delicious and a big portion too – six huge ravioli.

We split two second courses. The first was agnello alla cacciatora, lamb cooked with white wine, garlic, rosemary and anchovies too, I think. The meat was falling off the bone and the simple ingredients complemented that characteristic lamb flavour. Every bit of the sauce was sopped up with bread.

Our second second course was straccetti con rucola, strips of beef with rocket leaves. Though plainly cooked, the beef was thin and tender and obviously of good quality and the rocket leaves added a peppery contrast to the robust meat. Again, we inhaled this.

I couldn’t turn down dessert, not when they’re listed on the menu as “Dolci di Nonna Leda“. Oh yes, grandmother Leda was in charge! (And did I see her in the kitchen? There was a nonna in there…) A torta con pinoli to split again, please. It was a slice of sponge cake with thick pastry cream on top with a good layer of untoasted pine nuts. The Romans love their pine nuts but we were surprised to see most of them untoasted in desserts. But this untoastedness worked well with our light cake and cream – toasting would have made the pinenuts overwhelming.

We wondered why it took a while for our bill to come; it was because we actually needed some time from a waiter or waitress to recollect what we ate and to calculate our total bill on our paper tablecloth. We left after paying about €30, certainly good value eating. The place was absolutely rammed by the time we left so get there early!

Da Augusto
Piazza de’ Renzi, 15
00153 Rome, Italy

We cannot go all the way to Italy without having gelato! To maximise the number of flavours tried, we split each and every cup we ordered. The place we frequented the most was Il Gelato di San Crispino, purveyors of artisanal gelato made with top quality seasonal ingredients; their gelato is considered some of the best in Rome. Of course, the best comes at a price with what I consider a “regular” sized cup of gelato coming in at about €3.50-4.00. They don’t offer cones.

We ran into one branch by the Pantheon and this became our go-to place in the area. Our first cup was of two flavours of sorbet: pomegranate and bergamot. Wow. It sounds cliched but the pomegranate really was full of the flavour of the fruit while the bergamot was so highly scented, almost like perfume. Very fruity and not too sweet.

As soon as we finished that cup, we turned around immediately and headed back in. This time, hazelnut gelato and gelato di San Crispino (a honey cream). These were much richer and creamier, as expected. Their eponymous gelato was like dunking my tongue into a pot of honey while the hazelnut was exactly that – nutty.

On another visit, we split three flavours in a larger cup: pistachio, lemon and pear. The pistachio was a little weaker than I expected – I’ve been spoiled by the delicious gelato at Oddono’s in London. Lemon was wonderfully citrusy while pear was my favourite of the lot – you could almost detect that slight graininess of the fruit.

This really was some of the best gelato we had in Rome. OK, a massive craving for gelato has now set in…

Il Gelato di San Crispino
Piazza della Maddalena, 3
00186 Rome, Italy

This is the branch near the Pantheon that we frequented but there are a few other branches in Rome; all are listed on their website. Too bad we didn’t fly out of Terminal A at the airport – there’s one there!

We spent a very long morning exploring the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill (gosh, they’re big sites) but skipping the interior of the Colosseum; we’d see that on another trip, we reckoned. But it was near on 2pm and though we weren’t extremely hungry, our feet were starting to get sore and a sit down was much needed. The plan was originally to head to Trastevere and look for a restaurant there (I had a few on my list) but we ended up running into Giggetto after first going through the Portico D’Ottavia. The place was full and not only of tourists but locals too. And there was no waiter outside calling us inside – always a bad sign. This settled it – this was where we were going to have lunch and rest our feet. Only when I returned to London did I realise that An American in London had also made a visit here back in 2006 – her post was one I read a while back when I was planning for this trip. Oh, and hey! I just discovered that Londonelicious also went there earlier this year.

We started with a plate of their fried specialties, which they advertise with huge photos outside their restaurant. Don’t be put off by these – they fry things excellently and every table had a platter of some assortment or other. We shared another carciofo alla giudia, a filetto di baccalà (salted cod filet) and a fiori di zucchina ripieno (stuffed with mozzarella and an anchovy). That artichoke was even better than the one we had at La Matriciana, if that’s possible, and the courgette flower was absolutely gorgeous with its melty, chewy, cheesy filling with that anchovy saltiness. But the star of the plate was their filetto, the flaky, toothsome, salted cod sitting in perfectly crisp batter.

This time, we skipped the pasta course – I was a little pasta’ed out and one day without it would be ok, right? I opted for the Saltimbocca alla Romana, which arrived as three small veal escalopes with prosciutto and sage (the sage was sandwiched between the meats), all sitting in a thick white wine sauce. The veal was tender and as tasty as you can imagine though the ingredients are simple. The wine sauce was incredible and we sopped up every last bit with our bread.

Blai ordered the Trippa alla Romana – tender yet slightly chewy pieces of tripe in a tomato sauce with mint. I’d always found tripe to be a bit tasteless but this one had a slight …. tripey flavour? Not sure but the tomato sauce had certainly infused into the offal. And the mint intrigued us as we’d never heard of adding it to a tomato sauce before but hey, the Romans know what they’re doing.

We ended the meal with a tartufo nero for Blai and an espresso for me – I wasn’t taken by any of the desserts on offer. The tartufo was quite nice though – very rich and chocolatey gelato with a vanilla centre. The meal was a total of €50, making it not a budget meal but definitely one we thought was lovely. Some reviews online speak of terrible service but we didn’t encounter any problems.

Giggetto Al Portico D’Ottavia
Via del Portico d’Ottavia, 21
00186 Rome, Italy

After a morning of church viewing, our tummies were crying out for something to eat and after a bit of disappointment at the Mausoleum of Augustus (totally covered in overgrowth and surrounded by big fences – it was a no go), I came across a big sign/map for ‘Gusto. The Graphic Foodie had recommended the place to me via Twitter and it was on my list of possible places to eat. ‘Gusto turned out to be a complex consisting of a restaurant/pizzeria, a seafood restaurant, a wine shop, a kitchenware shop, and I’m probably leaving out a few other things too. With such a vast collection of shops, I was wondering how each would fare – we settled on the pizzeria to find out.

At lunchtime, the ‘Gusto pizzeria had a few special menus on offer – one for pizza and a drink and another for the buffet and a drink. Buffet? In Rome? I recalled my initial disbelief over some interaction on Twitter with SpiceSpoon when she said that she’d found that buffets in Rome were fresh and excellent. I took a look at the offerings and decided it was definitely worth a try – everything did look fresh and vibrant and so delicious.

There were many locals there for lunch, always a good sign, and the majority opted for the buffet. There were both hot dishes and cold salads and I sampled bits from both. Of the food on offer, I skipped the roast chicken and the polpette but had silky soft aubergine slices topped with crispy breadcrumbs, sliced rare beef with a balsamic reduction and pine nuts, whole grilled prawns, roasted tomatoes filled with risotto. Fresh mozzarella knots, thickly sliced juicy tomatoes, grilled aubergine slices, grilled courgette slices, cooked spinach, and my favourite, the spinach braised with garlic and peperoncino.

As is usual with buffets, you’re welcome to go and refill your plate! I was craving vegetables and everything was amazingly fresh and simple yet tasty. If there’s one thing I learned on this trip, it’s just how simply Italians cook their food and overall, it’s the quality of the ingredients that counts. As for carbs, the bread basket on our table provided enough for me – my favourite was the crispy sheets of baked pizza dough.

Blai had a pizza, which turned out to be Neapolitan style with a soft, chewy, puffy crust. It was as delicious as it was beautiful but of course, I have no idea what the best is, not having been to Naples!

The bill for our lunch was only €20 altogether. If you’re in Rome but are unable to get yourself to this part of the city, it seems that there are a number of places offering a buffet at lunchtime and I’d recommend trying one.

‘Gusto – Pizzeria
Piazza Augusto Imperatore, 9
00186 Rome, Italy