Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - What to Eat in Rome: A Fascinating History of Italian Cuisine

Episode Date: October 31, 2017

When in Rome, of course you need to order pasta and pizza. But there’s also street food and a blossoming cocktail culture to try. Food and drink expert Katie Parla, a Jersey girl based in Rome, provides a fascinating crash course on the history of Roman cuisine in her cookbook Tasting Rome. On this episode, Katie explains Rome’s rich culinary history, and shares insider advice on what to eat in Rome, as well as where to find the best dishes.  Links to everything we discussed can be found on postcardacademy.co I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. If you so desire, you can sign up for my newsletter here. And thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcardDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel, and if you like Italian food, then you are in for a treat today. I'm speaking to Katie Parla, author of one of my favorite cookbooks, Tasting Rome, which is a great foreword by Mario Patali. Katie is an American who's lived in Rome since 2003. When not writing cookbooks and articles for the New York Times and other publications, she leads some of the most innovative culinary and archaeological tours in the city. Fun fact, she consulted on Season 2 of Master of Nun when they filmed in Italy. In this episode, we dive deep into the rich history of Roman cuisine. We talk about which foods you have to try when visiting Rome, and also where you can find the best dishes. I've included all the details for you on postcardacademy.com,

so don't worry about writing everything down. And now on to my conversation with Katie. All right, welcome Katie, my favorite expat in Italy. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat today. So you are from New Jersey, but have lived in Rome for, is it 15 years? Yeah, I always round up, so it'll be 15 years in January. And what prompted you to make the move?

Well, I visited Rome when I was in high school and was really into history and really into sort of Italian culture. So after that, you know, trip when I was a sophomore, I went home, told my parents that I was moving to Italy, and just never really made another life plan. So what was their thought about having their daughter moved so far away? Were they supportive? I mean, at first they thought I just wanted to live in like a pizza and gelato capital. But when the reality set in that I was serious and then ultimately, you know, after graduating

from college with an art history degree and a focus on Roman history, they, they sort of have got used to the idea. And like, I think my dad was just like on board right away. And it took my mom maybe a year or two before she was, you know, fully, fully accepting, but always supportive. And now they're super psyched about it. My mom was just here for two weeks and, you know, really loves coming to Rome and feels really comfortable here. So it's like, it's, it's great. So we're all happy. Do you have Italian roots? Yeah. My great grandparents were from Sicily. and my great, great grandparents were from Basilicaata, which is this region in the sort of in-step of the Italian boot

between the Toe, Calabria, and the heel, Puglia. So, I mean, growing up in New Jersey, you really identify with your ancestry, whether you really have an understanding of that or not or, you know, the language or not. So, you know, I grew up in the garden state, I'm always saying, like, oh, I'm Italian. But, and I think that, you know,

that, like, sort of identity. that I thought I knew really clashed with the reality of living in Italy, Italian-American culture. This is not a shock. It's very different than Italian culture. But as a kid, I didn't know that. So that sort of contrast made me even more excited to learn about Italian culture because I really didn't know anything about Italy aside from what I had read. Do you remember what surprised you the most when you first moved there? as a resident? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that was really surprising to me was how people my age, I moved

when I was 22, had a degree from university, was financially independent, how that experience was really, really unique. And a lot of the people I was meeting didn't have anything in common with that experience. And really, it wasn't, you know, it was only like, you know, 40 or 50. year old people that I was meeting that had that level of that level of independence. So that sort of idea of like going up going on your own. I think I felt really like a foreigner here in that sense. And then of course there are lots of like food and cultural phopas that are unique to Italy that you know, we don't really we don't really learn growing up in in Jersey. Right. Yeah. I have a similar

experience. I've lived in Italy often on I also have Sicilian roots. And that's how I'm able to live there because I actually became an Italian citizen. And when I first moved to Italy, I lived in Reggio Emilia and from New York. And I absolutely loved that town. I thought it had everything, restaurants, a really cool historical center and everyone I met there was like, what are you doing here? Why did you come here? You're from New York. But I love that experience. But it like you, it was just such a foreign concept to them to just pack up everything you know and start over. Totally. And I think that's changed since the financial crisis when you have now like hundreds of thousands of Italians who have gone abroad to find work. So now it's not so strange. But 15 years ago, it was pretty, it was pretty unique. Yeah. So how are you able to live and work in Italy as an American?

Same way as you are. I have Italian citizenship through my ancestry. So I applied and just demonstrated that I was related to my great-grandfather who was born in Palermo in 1890. So spent some time collecting documents at vital statistics offices throughout the tri-state area and his Sicilian birth certificate and turned those docs over and in a year I had a passport. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Tell me a little bit about how, like, what was, how did you get your start in Italy? Was it doing the tours? Yeah, I moved here fresh out of college and just assumed everyone would give me like a job with lots of money because I was totally clueless. But didn't really, didn't really know what I was going to do and managed to get a job.

Basically, I was an intern at a boarding school. I was an intern in sort of income bracket only. I was teaching history at one of the boarding schools in Rome. I was teaching like a number of classes. I was living in boarding and managing the boarding students and like working in the library and the office. So it was like this crazy intense job. And I realized immediately that I was unqualified and pretty bad at teaching.

But I did love planning the field trips that I got to take the history students on. So within like a couple of weeks of moving to Rome, I was, you know, really looking forward to those Tuesday classes and knew that I would be better equipped to teach or sort of be in that type of like didactic setting with grown up. So I started working for a company at the time. It was Scala Real. I know it's context travel. And that's, you know, that years long relationship with that with that company allowed me sort of build confidence with managing itineraries and understanding like the sort of needs of individual groups and and. And so my guiding started right away. And it's something I'm like, I love so much. I, again, like, would probably jump in the tiber if I had to sit in front of my computer and write books and articles all day. Don't be miserable. And that, you know, that like just taking people through Rome and like unpealing all the layers of history is tied with pizza eating as like one of my few skills.

And your expertise is so interesting. So you got your degree in art history from. Yale and then your master's is in gastronomy, is it? Yeah, my master's is in Italian gastronomic culture from the University of Rome to Bergata. So that combination, I think, on private tours would just make for a stunning vacation. Yeah, I mean, you know Rome is this obviously very ancient city, but when people are here, what they're encountering is a lot of the contemporary culture.

So although I'm like still a total classics geek, I love history when I was taking, you know, doing my master's program, I became less, I became less sort of rooted in ancient customs and more interested in analyzing what Romans are eating today, how the food gets here, what the food systems like, and how food customs are evolving and how we could sort of track this in real time with statistics from sort of the National Statistics Bureau or, anecdotally. And yeah, so I think whether you're here just to see the forum or just to see the Vatican, you have to eat food. And I think because some of the food here is really amazing, being able to offer people information about like, why are you eating Carbonara and how did this become the sort of like most famous dish in Rome, even though it's only about 70 years old? That is really fascinating to people, especially history fans. Yeah, you open up your cookbook tasting room, which I really love with history on Roman food and culture. Could you give a little summary of that?

Yeah, I mean, just sort of like the crash course in Rome and Roman cuisine is, according to legend, the Romans were founded by shepherds. And so that idea of like living off of local protein in the form of lamb, local flavors like fennel and arugula and mallow and mint, all the things that you still crush under your feet when you walk through the forum, that sort of defined some of the indigenous flavors. But over the course of the centuries, whether it was in antiquity, when Rome was a really cosmopolitan city, a lot of people were descended from slaves.

A lot of people came from all over the world, influencing the cuisine throughout the Middle Ages with pilgrims coming through in the Renaissance as the city flourished and had lots of, again, pilgrims coming, bringing traditions with them. And then ultimately in the late 19th century with the unification of Italy and Rome becoming the capital, you have this influx of ingredients from all over the peninsula, people bringing their curing traditions and their cooking techniques and their ingredients with them. And that, you know, I think that really, that idea that Roman cuisine is like this wonderful contamination of influences from all over Italy and all over the world sort of clashes with the, as with the branding that a lot of people have here, that like Roman food is Roman food,

and it's all from Rome. Well, walk through any market and you'll see artichokes, which probably didn't come here until the Renaissance and eggplants and tomatoes and peppers, which, you know, came in the Middle Ages and Renaissance respectively. So, I mean, I think that's, it's fun to, like, break down the myth with easily observable fact in the sort of food category. So that's always a blast for me. And that's a lot of what tasting Rome seeks to do.

And you also talk about the Jewish ghetto and how that has influenced Roman cuisine. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, for sure. So a little background on the ghetto, there's a neighborhood in Rome. It corresponds about four city blocks today. And the city blocks are from like 1900. They're tall and elegant and have lots of light and air flowing through them. But they stand on the ruins of the ghetto, which was.

was a slum established as the Jewish residential district by papal decree. And from 1555 until 1870, the Pope required the Jewish community to live within a walled district that was the least healthy in town. I mean, there was a malfunctioning sewer running under it. It was on the tiber banks. The tiber was constantly over flooding. It was crowded. And because the neighborhood was dense and fire prone, a lot of the, a lot of the,

A lot of people did communal cooking. There was a lot of cooking in the streets. And some of the super famous Roman snacks, especially starters, are from the ghetto tradition and have been co-opted by the community at large. So things like battered and fried cod or flowered and fried vegetables. And then the sort of most emblematic item is carchofi a la Judea. The name means Jewish style artichoke. So, in fact, the origins are right in the name in that case.

And it's an artichoke, a local variety that's pruned of its outer leaves. The stem is stripped of its skin. And then it's poached in oil to cook it through. It's drained, smashed, and then cooked in hot oil to crisp up the leaves. And that used to be one of those sort of things you could eat on the fly after it was sort of cooked in these cauldrons along the street. And sort of fried food, fast food, influence of the Jewish tradition is still really prudent. present in Rome, it's just not always ascribed to the Jewish community as it should be. And then because of the impoverished nature of the Jewish community, there was a lot of simmered meats,

pork cuts that were really tough would be simmered for a long time. So the sort of brazed meat tradition of Rome, Strakoto being one of the emblematic dishes, is from that tradition. And then payata, the intestines of milk-fed veal, which are, cooked in tomato sauce and tossed with rigatoni on menus all over town, that's also a Roman Jewish original. And it doesn't maybe sound kosher, but it certainly is and was a popular ghetto dish right through the end of the ghetto period and into the liberation period. Do you have a favorite restaurant in that neighborhood? Yeah, I go to Nona Betta a lot.

And my friend Umberto Paoncello is the owner there, the place is name. for his grandma Elizabeth Nornabeta, in other words. And he's sort of an amateur historian of the district. And although his grandmother was born after the ghetto period, she learned to cook from the women in her neighborhood who grew up in the ghetto and had a very frugal way of cooking and was sort of like the keeper of the family traditions and taught Huberto's mom, who taught him.

So I love that sort of connection to directly, to the ghetto, that direct line to the ghetto, which, you know, we can, we can sort of have in, in the, in the sense that we can eat dishes from the ghetto period, but we can't stand in the ghetto anymore. The ghetto was destroyed. We can only imagine it. So his restaurant is sort of like the proxy. When I think of Italian cooking and dining, I think of a lot of rules. I have a lot of Italian friends. I've cooked with Italians before. This summer, I lived with a few Italians in Rome, and I put sunried tomatoes in like these vegetables I was cooking and I really thought they were going to crucify me. Like it was a big scene.

But I know that Italian cooking can also be innovative. So I would love to hear a little bit more from you and maybe get an example on how traditions can have a bit of a twist. Yeah. I mean, I think the like modernizing of Italian regional cuisines is happening at different paces. depending on where you happen to be in Italy. So if you're in like Amilia Romagna, a place like Austria Francescana and a chef Masimo Boutura are really advancing these modern concepts of the local cuisine.

We don't have that in Rome. There are fine dining restaurants in Rome. They're almost universally horrendous. And their sort of twists on the local cuisine are generally disappointing and half-baked. But what we do have in Rome, which is way more accessible and, in my opinion, way more interesting, is a number of sort of younger chefs, bakers, gelato makers, food artisans who are taking the sort of accepted Roman food forms and tweaking them a little bit. So I'll give you a couple of examples.

There are these egg-shaped parcels in Rome called suplea. Rice croquettes. They're called orangeini and they're a different shape. of a tradition in the South. But in any event, the Roman suplei traditionally, the classical, was made from like risotto that's got like a tomato meat sauce, which is cooled and then packed around a piece of mozzarella, then it's all breaded and deep fried. So the mozzarella melts in the middle when you break it open.

And for decades, when you got suplea in Rome, it was always that traditional form. And then starting in like 0.8, 09, some takeaway joint started to play around with the filling. So you can find things like radicchio and Gorgonzola-flavored suple, or even suplea that's made with broken pasta or short pasta, like trofier and pesto. So for me, that's really a modern way to think of street food or fast food. And it's effective because it's not overwrought, it's delicious, and it's affordable. Another example, and this is the one that's probably traveled, you know, the furthest away from Roman boundaries, is the trapezzino. And this guy, Stefano Caligari, who had a pizza by the sliced joint in a neighborhood called Testacho, was playing around with pizza forms and made these sort of rectangular sourdough pizzas, like squareish pizzas, and would cut them diagonally and then cut the sliced part open and stuff it with eggplant parmesan or chicken ketchup. Tori or tongue with green sauce or meatballs. And he made like basically like a Roman pizza cone,

I guess, that took main courses and put them inside bread, which might not seem like a revolutionary concept in a global setting. But in Rome, it's very novel. And pretty soon the trepicino, his invention had sort of taken over his business and no one wanted his pizza by the slice anymore. So he shuttered that shop and opened a branded trupicino stall in that place. And now there's several in Rome. There's one in Florence. There's one in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There's several in Japan. And if you think about it, it's that perfect, it's that perfect like repackaging of Roman food suitable for this economy. From the years of recession and the really devastating financial crisis that Italy suffered, people wanted to eat their local

dishes and they couldn't sit down at restaurants or go home for lunch to eat them. So the trapezzino and then some other innovative pizza concepts have made those familiar dishes accessible to them, but they're just way cheaper than you would find at a restaurant, way quicker than if you had to prepare them yourselves, and way more affordable. Yeah, I've been to the one into Stachio. I actually didn't know that it had expanded globally, but yeah, it was delicious. It tastes so good. I have one today.

I find it really interesting, the writings that you've done on how the across, economy has affected food in Italy. Because I've talked to a lot of Italians and they still talk a lot about you always need to have quality ingredients. And I think I'm just curious about how that matches up with reality because quality ingredients can be very expensive, not to mention the fact that people work a lot more and don't necessarily have the time to cook from scratch. So I would just love to hear more from you about that. I mean, in my experience, whether it's a home cook or professional chef, people are constantly. constantly lying about how much they're spending on food, and they're usually exaggerating their dedication to quality because in a restaurant you have really narrow margins, and people's wages

are pretty low here. And they, you know, even as the cost of living goes up and people do contribute like a greater percentage of their income towards food, there's a lot more budget options. There's a lot more sort of food of dubious quality that is available. And certainly industrial foods are very present. I mean, all you have to do is visit any supermarket in Rome and see what people are buying. Occasionally, I'll pop in to buy, I don't know, like butter or something or yogurt. And it's very rare that I find that I find people buying fresh ingredients. A lot of it's like partially transformed food, canned pasta sauces, things that you might not expect. And things that actually clash with what people

tell you about themselves. A very good leader of olive oil could cost five euros or 10 euros or 20 euros depending on its source. And at supermarkets, people are reaching for other things. Now, to be fair, there certainly are still families in Rome that have a connection to the land. They might have their own olive orchards or olive groves. They might make their own oil. But that's becoming increasingly rare. So, I mean, I think it's very appealing. to paint Italian regional cuisines as like absolutely rooted in only the best, seasonal, most delicious, perfect ingredients, that's not the reality. They're, especially in the crisis economy, was a sort of pulling apart of food standards and the designer pasta brands, the ones that,

that I would deem as like much higher quality than the industrial brands. That's an elite product, even if it's only a, you know, two euros more a box. There are like well-documented statistics about how people's consumption patterns have changed and they favor the industrial foods to be quite frank. Right. Yeah, you've made quite a name for yourself in the culinary world because I think you speak often on things that other people maybe are afraid to talk about. And I think, like American tourists, for instance, like pretty.

much only think of Italy as you're going to have a great meal no matter where you go. And you do a good job pointing out the places where you actually will have a great meal. But I'm curious as to what your reception was as an American female actually. Well, I mean, it depends. You've got like, you definitely have a culture here that doubts the intelligence of foreign women, particularly American women. Questions are value, our role. At first, I certainly encountered,

I encountered a lot of men who would just reject my writings, would troll me, would write me nasty messages, and instruct me to go back to eating spaghetti with ketchup, which is like super weird because I've never done that before. It sounds awful. I think it's more of a British thing. Stereatory. Yeah, I'm like, do people do that?

If they do that, like, maybe you should try to like be nice to them tell them how to do it. Yeah. Better. Anyway, yeah, I mean, at first,

yeah, there were some, like, there was some really, like, nasty, there were some nasty people in Rome saying really, uh,

horrible, unfounded things about me and, and my, uh, credentials. But, um, I,

like, am very much of the, very much of the mind that, like, I don't work for those people. I work for, I work for really dedicated, hardworking food artisans who need an ambassador.

who need a translator. And I work for my readers. And I feel really confident that by telling my readers the truth, they will have a much better experience and they'll contribute to the local economy in a much more meaningful way than if I went around writing positive reviews or only focusing on the positive things. I mean, it's actually, it works to the detriment of the sort of growing food tourism economy, to be honest. So there are a lot of businesses and a lot of people, a lot of fellow Americans who sort of establish their entire message on this dishonest positivity. And I think it does a real disservice to this culture.

And it's, you know, I do feel like Roman in a lot of ways, but I'm also very aware of the fact that I was not born here. I, you know, don't have to work in a kitchen every single day. my job is something else. So it's important to be respectful of the people who are like, you know, just busting their chops and like working so hard. If you paint everything as universally rosy, you are condemning them, putting them in a category that is not appropriate, not professional, not acceptable. And, you know, they deserve to survive in this, like, in this crazy world of ours.

So, I mean, that's sort of how I feel about that. Let's talk about some of your favorite places then and like the true artisans. And I would love to start with pizza because that is my favorite food. And can you just give an overall, an overview of pizza, I guess, for somebody who might be unfamiliar with the differences between pizza in Rome and pizza in Naples? Totally. So there are a couple of Roman style pizzas. There's pizza in telia, so like the sort of sheet pan style pizza, which is sold by the slice by weight. And pizza in telia in a sheet pan is part of a larger genre called pizza al-Talio.

So sometimes the pizza by the slice or pizza al-talli is cooked in a sheet pan. Sometimes it's baked in this sort of long, oblong, paddle-shaped form directly on the bed of an electric deck oven. And both are meant to be Roman fast food. They have simple toppings. Generally, the dough is like barely fermented. It's supposed to be quick. It's supposed to be filling. And it's supposed to be portable.

and my absolute favorite pizza in telia and pizza atal talio is at pizarium, which is this sort of third wave pizza by the slice joint because the owner Gabrily Bonchi doesn't want his pizza to be quick fast food. He wants it to be a delicious gourmet product that champions the farmers that contribute his ingredients, whether it's, you know, farmers making the grain that goes to the mill in Piedmont to Stone Mill is flour or, you know, the, farmer in northern Lazio that harvests chickory or potatoes or whatever. I also really like, and this is what I eat for breakfast every day, and I encourage others to do this also. Pizza Bianca or Pizza Rosa, which is just either like baked dough with olive oil and salt or baked dough with a little bit of tomato brush on it. And I love that at Antico, Forno Rocholi or Forno Campo Fiore 2, institutions in the center. What are your other favorite neighborhoods in Rome, which your favorite place to wander around on Seyre Sunday? I have 100 zillion favorite places. I'm very, like, in spite of the cultural and political baggage that goes along with the 20-year fascist year in Italy,

I'm endlessly fascinated by the fascist-era districts, which are numerous. They include the Apio-Latino neighborhood just outside of Porte Matronia, not far from the Stirco Massimo. And it's very residential with some ruins in it, and has lots of housing projects, these ambitious, huge public housing structures. I love Pignetto and Centocelli and Tor Pignatara, which are the sort of formerly working class, now very ethnically diverse districts in the eastern, just east of the train station. I love the Piazza Bologna area. Aor, which is much more sort of monumental from a fascist perspective.

and has a lot of civic buildings rather than residential buildings is such a like a weird haunted place and I really dig it. And yeah, I mean, the list goes on. There's so many, there's so many spots and Flaminio and the stadium area. They're just, they're super cool to me. What about for a Friday night? What's the best neighborhood to go out? In your opinion, where would you and your friends hang out? So there is this sort of thing. I can't find the perfect neighborhood for going out that has both like awesome places to drink and awesome places to eat except maybe the center like my perfect Friday nights probably dinner at the bar at Rosholi for like Borata and Carbonara and then cocktails at the Jerry Thomas project which is as the

name suggests a cocktail bar inspired by America's first celebrity bartender Jerry Thomas and otherwise if I'm you know just going out for drink drinks. I really enjoy Pignetto. There's an awesome natural wine bar there and a great, one of my favorite pubs, Bureau of Pew is there. So those are, that's definitely like my Friday night, Friday night ritual. And I think you gave private tours in Pignetto. Yeah. It's a super weird tour. It does like a lot of like infrastructure and like hydraulic engineering meets like graffiti. It's kind of wacky, but it's really fun. So if I were in town just for a weekend and I wanted to do a private tour with you. Which one should, I know you have like probably so many favorites, but which one

would I go on? I mean, my favorite tour is the Prati and Triomfale tour, which visits two of my favorite neighborhoods. I didn't mention them in that litany, but Prati and Triomfali are adjacent neighborhoods just north of the Vatican museums in St. Peter's Basilica. And they have some of my favorite places to eat pizzer for pizza by the slice, La Tritione for cheeses and teases. And cured meats, produce at the Triumphale Market, trappitini at a craft beer pub called Bere, like all this awesome, awesome delicious, like savory and sweet things at Panifiche Bonchi.

And there's a lot of grazing along the tour, but then there's also a lot of discussion about how these two neighborhoods developed, why they were built, who built them, and how the people who live there are distinct. And I think you also give an ancient city tour. Is that more of like a classical tour? I love that you have so many things that I've not seen offered anywhere else.

And then you also have the ancient city tour. But I'm guessing your spin on the ancient city tour would be really unique as well. Yeah, the ancient city tour is so much fun. We start at the Palatine, talk about the palaces of the emperors, overlook the forum and then walk through it and talk about the sort of urban development of the city and its civic areas and then wrap up at the Coliseum. And what I love about those three sites is you can, like there's some people who come back every year.

We do the same tour every year, but with a slightly different angle. And you can focus, you know, exclusively on engineering and masonry and artistic embellishment. Or you can focus on how like public spaces were used to manipulate the populace. And you could sort of take all of those very. like iconic places and tell different stories about them depending on the preference of the visitor. So some people are coming to Rome once in their lives and they want just a crash course in history and others have been to Rome or maybe have lived in Rome and they want to go a little bit deeper and really understand, you know, different layers of the city that they haven't confronted before.

So, I mean, it's also like a favorite tour of mine. I dig that so much. You're very popular. I'm guessing people have to book ahead with you quite far in advance. How far in advance should people book if they're planning on heading to Italy? So it totally depends because my writing schedule is so crazy. So like normally people book six, I book up six weeks or two months in advance. But because I'm writing so many books and working on so many articles, I tend to block out days throughout the month. for like hitting deadlines. And sometimes those come open last minute. So like actually this week I happen to have done way more editing than I thought I was going to do. So I opened up a few days and booked some last minute tours. So I would say, you know, if you can book early, great.

If not, just hit me up. And, you know, I have some really awesome colleagues, Arianna, Marizzo and Louisa, who have been trained to do tours in my style and who, are a little bit more affordable and very amazing guides. And so I'm always happy to set people up with them if I'm not available. And we can find all that information on your website, Katie Parley. Katieparley.com. Before you go, I would love to do a fire round of your Roman favorites,

fair foods and where to get the best, starting out with bakery. Pizza by the slice at Pani Fitcha Bonchi. Sorry, I lied, pizza. This is hard. Brunch place. No brunch. No brunch. Scratch that off the list if you're going to Rome. And they say it brunch, which you can't seriously, you can't be serious. Brunch. Like, I can't eat that. Okay. Italian snack. Oh, God, pizza. I'm so basic, but like pizza. Pizza by the slice at Antico, Forno Rocholi, some little pizza Rosa.

What about if I wanted to get suple? Suplitio. Classic suplei at suplizio in the center. Place to get coffee. Pergamino next to the Vatican. Casual lunchspat. Cheseraletto. Great outdoor patio.

Very delicious trotteria food. Super unpretentious. Awesome. What neighborhood is that in? It's in Janikolense. So it's like up and over the geniculum. How about gelato? Al Settimo Jello and Prati, natural, delicious flavors, especially the fruit sorbets from the owner's own trees and an excellent pistachio.

My favorite flavor. Favorite place to go for Apparitivo, and I guess just tell people what that is really quickly if they're not familiar. Apperativo is like sort of an Italian happy hour, and it really varies from place to place. Because there's so many students here, a lot of the aperitivo bars will serve a drink and a snack for a flat fee. And then you get your drink and a plate to fill up at the buffet. I don't love any particular aperitivo spot. But when I do go get a pre-dinner cocktail, I go to either cafe propaganda or litro. Upscale dinner.

If you want to go and celebrate something. Tempeo de easy day, a fish place near the Coliseum. and it's pretty easy to, especially if you, like, really go for the raw bar, it's easy to hit like 150 or 200 euros ahead. Where should we go if we're sick of Italian food? We've been there for two months. Mesab, Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine in a little tiny converted garage on the Via Pranestina. How about pizza? So not pizza by the slice, but if we want to make an evening of having dinner. Like the thin crust, crispy, chewy Roman-style pizza at Pizzeria Ostience, on Via Ostience. It's super delicious.

What's your favorite pasta? And where do you go for it? Grisha at Rocholi. And that's like Carbonara minus the egg. But it came first. So we should really give it the respect it needs. And it's rigatoni with guanchale, black pepper, pecorina romano. Who would you say it's the best cacho-a-pepe?

Oof, this is always such a hard question. I do enjoy like a looser sauce. So Chesere-a-Cazoletto does a very good one, but there are a lot of delicious cacchua pepés around. And before we go on, I've heard you give an interesting sort of drunk history on Cacchua pepe. Could you just, can you share that right now? Yeah, it's one of those dishes that it makes total sense. sense that it evolved as a drunk food. And one of my favorite places in the center, Amandal Panthe, and used to not have it on their menu at all. It would be unthinkable to

have it on the menu. They would serve it to their drunk guests after dessert if they were still sticking around and pounding wine and they needed something that took up the alcohol. So in like the early 20th century to mid-20th century, it was that food that you would eat after you had too much to drink, even if you'd already had your like deserting coffee. And it's a really simple dish. The ingredients are in the name. Cacho is Pecorino Romano. Pepe is black pepper. And using little pasta water to make a paste. The sauce is this sort of very savory, salty, piquant condiment, which is mixed with pasta, usually tonarelli, which is like a handmade spaghetti. Yes, I love it. It's definitely one of my faves. Dessert. Dessert. I mean, gelato, always.

And Alcetti-Mogel is just one place that I love. I'm also. also really into gelatry day graki. But if I had to go like not gelato, like not frozen dessert, then I would head to regularly this awesome pastry shop near Piazza Vittorio for a Marie Tocelso, so like the sweet-easted bun filled with like a really obscene amount of whipped cream. That sounds delicious. Is there any dining etiquette that foreign travelers should be aware of so they don't embarrass themselves? So many, so many things. Don't wear shorts at a restaurant. You can get away with it at lunch, but not dinner, and that goes for men and women. You don't have to dress, like, up to go out, but do dress smartly and be really polite when you go in, even if the servers, you know, servers in Roma aren't, like, usually super outgoing to first-time customers.

But do be polite, say hello, like, acknowledge the people. You don't need to be fluent, but do learn a few polite phrases, like, thank you, graccia. You don't have to learn like the whole bono serre, bonjourno thing. You could just say salve, which is like hi, and use that for hello and goodbye. And that'll serve you really far. And don't ask for Parmigiano-Ragano with your spaghetti with clams. Like the music will stop in the whole dining room. How much should people tip a restaurant?

It totally depends on the restaurant if it's a very casual place. I mean, a lot of my Roman friends would not tip at all. I usually leave two euros, a euro or two per per, person. A euro or two at a at a pizzae is fine. I tend to go up a little bit if I'm at a restaurant where I've been given particularly good service, but I

rarely leave more than like two euro 50 to five euros a person at a restaurant. If you're at a fine dining place, a little bit more as expected, but if your bills like 5,000 euros and you leave 50, everyone's going to be very happy with that. Is service being included common? Service is always included,

even when they tell you it isn't. And that is, that's the standard. Because restaurants and cafes have become increasingly sort of narrow margin, a lot of owners try to exploit visitors' lack of knowledge by telling them or having their servers instruct people that service isn't included and then getting an extra 10% out of them, which is completely unethical. It's probably illegal. And it's a custom that's more widely practiced sort of in touristic district.

And you don't find it in most, you know, in most places. But, you know, I have seen it pop up here and there in the center where only foreign travelers will be given the menu saying service is not included. Italians know it is. So the Italian menu doesn't get to have anything so ridiculous and false. Okay. So we've had a good meal. We want to go to a wine bar, wine bar or cocktail bar. Which would you recommend or both?

I mean, I love I'll go chetto. it's super packed every single night. People like get a glass. They stand out on the street. It's a super fun scene. And they have a really nice selection of bottles and wines by the glass. So that's a favorite spot for a cocktail. The Jerry Thomas project's great, but you have to book in advance.

And they allow smoking inside, which is like straight up nasty. So Cafe Propaganda or Litro, which, you know, both have no smoking and proper ventilation are my spots. Where was the wine bar that you mentioned? Il go chetto is on Via de Banquee, number 14. So very close to Kizanovova and Campo de Fiore. Very great, Katie. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

Before we go, what's keeping you busy these days? Oh, I'm writing two cookbooks, editing them, and writing lots of articles about everything from pasta traditions in Rome or bar. to Paris cocktail culture. So filing lots of magazine features and working on these cookbooks and lots of tours in the beautiful October weather we're having. Where can people find out more about you? I'm easy to find by my website, katieparla.com, and that has links to all of my recommendations,

my e-book, my cookbooks, my travel books, guidebooks, and then also my social media handles. I'm at Katie Parla on Instagram and Twitter. And Katie Parla on Facebook. Well, thank you again. This has been really great. It was such a delight. Thank you so much.

Wow. Are you ready to book your flight to Rome? Make sure you check out last week's episode to find the best travel deals. I've shared all this great info from Katie on postcardacademy.com slash tasting Rome. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter for weekly travel news and insider advice. Next week, the Postcard Academy goes to Paris. When I asked Katie who I should interview next, she said, I needed to talk to Lindsay Trimuda. A Philadelphia native, Lindsay is a food and travel writer who's been based in Paris since 2006.

We'll talk about her bestselling book, The New Paris, which looks at how Paris has changed over the last 10 years. And of course, we will get into all the best things to eat and drink when you visit the city. So make sure you subscribe to the Postcard Academy podcast, you don't miss it. If you like today's episode, please share it with a friend, and if you're so inclined, leave a review on iTunes. This helps people discover the show. You can follow Postcard Academy on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and if you want, you can even email me. I'm Sarah at Postcardacademy.com. That's all for now.

Thanks for listening, and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicotel.com slash blank no more.