How Do You Say Delicious in Italian?: Eating Rome by Elizabeth Minchilli #weekendcooking @BethFishReads @eminchilli

cover imageI’ve been away from the blog for a while, but I was also “away” away this month…for eight full days in Rome sight-seeing and eating!

In the weeks and months leading up to the trip, I had a Rome reading list, a movie-watching list, Web sites bookmarked, and was learning Italian for tourists – all of which got short shrift from me as other things took priority. But in the end the trip was still pretty darn wonderful; I’ll probably be writing and talking about it for a while if I can get any other blog posts done before I’m submerged in real life again.

IMG_3282Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City by Elizabeth Minchilli is a wonderful guide to Roman food and drink. The author fills you in on how the locals order at restaurants (e.g. Drink beer, not wine, with pizza) and coffee bars (e.g. Don’t buy coffee at the counter and take it to a table to sit down) and street food (e.g. Don’t eat while walking around, unless it’s gelato or a very particular slice of pizza) but she advises you as a friend, and as someone who was once new to these strange customs herself –not in a scolding way!

pizza and beerThe book also has sections on stocking your Italian pantry , shopping in the markets, and many recipes for recreating favorite meals when you return home. The author had written five coffee table books about various Italian topics before beginning her blog, Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome, where she writes about the city she loves and has lived in for years. An American, she spent some time in her childhood living in Rome when her parents upped and moved the whole family there after taking a three-week vacation in Italy (!) and after going back to Florence for grad school work, she ended up marrying an Italian man and settling down in Rome, which she describes as “the city I had always truly considered home in my heart.”

This is from the introduction to Eating Rome:

Eating Rome is my homage to the city that feeds me – literally and figuratively. It is a personal, quirky, and (I hope) fun look at the city through my own food-focused vision. This is how I experience Rome, day by day, bite by bite.”

But even though it seemed like I took a LOT of pictures of food on our vacation, we did do a lot of sight-seeing, too! We also had must-try restaurant suggestions from others, plus a restaurant meal in Rome takes 2-3 hours minimum, so we didn’t get to visit anywhere near all of the places Elizabeth Minchilli writes so temptingly about in her book. Plus, not being locals, we did a lot of the touristy type of eating, too (lots of sidewalk cafes.)

Caffe CanovaHowever, we did eschew the touristy after-dinner drink (limoncello) in favor of trying grappa and amaro, although the waiter the first time we ordered grappa was so sure we wouldn’t like the very strong liquor he brought us a bottle of limoncello, a sweet liqueur, too!

Limoncello, amaro, and grappa (after-dinner drinks)
Limoncello, amaro, and grappa (after-dinner drinks)

Thanks to Eating Rome, we also managed to avoid the touristy gaffe of ordering cappucino at any other time than in the morning, but I think that the Rome coffee culture deserves a blog post of its own! (Chapter 6 of Eating Rome is titled “How to Order Coffee Like a Roman”.)

two cups of cappuccini
In Rome, cappuccino, or any coffee with milk, is a morning-only drink.

Happy Weekend Cooking!

Weekend Cooking badgeLinked to Weekend Cooking, a weekly feature on Beth Fish Reads. Click/tap image for Weekend Cooking posts from other bloggers.

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Judith
8 years ago

Looks like you had a great time! How nice to find a book like that to guide you through the best places in Rome! BTW limoncello is one of my favorite drinks. 🙂 (Never been in Rome.)

JoAnn @ Lakeside Musing

What an amazing trip… and the books sounds like it was really helpful, too. Looking forward to more Roman posts 🙂

Esme
8 years ago

I love books like this. They are so much fun. You and your husband are darling. I love a man with style. The hat and scarf…bellisimo. Your haircut is quite flattering. Have you heard of I’ll eat what Phil is eating? It is on PBS-he is the producer of Everyone Loves Raymond and visits Florence. You will get hungry watching it.

Carole from Carole's Chatter

I’m green with envy! Fab book too. Cheers from Carole’s Chatter!

Booker Talk
8 years ago

The great thing about Rome is that the history is all around you – you don’t need to go looking for it, just turn the corner and oh there’s another column. Plus you’re never far from a gelato or cafe crema to sustain you

Beth F
8 years ago

What a great trip! And I love that book — how fun to get a head start on acting like a local. 🙂 Good to know the American habit of beer with pizza is also an Italian one. And too funny that the waiter didn’t trust that you’d like grappa.

Molly
8 years ago

Good thing you didn’t have to deal with your gluten-free daughter on this vacation!! Though I do hear that Italy is a good place to be for celiac people. Good tips about the coffee culture . . . and good to know that limoncello is a tourist no-no, though that still sounds better to me than grappa, to be honest!

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[…] Rome by Elizabeth Minchilli (see my last Weekend Cooking post) has a whole chapter on how to drink coffee in Rome and there are also many blog post with better […]

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