On Italian food: Olive Garden versus the real thing

Antipasti platter including all sorts of interesting and non-American-palate-approved things

The Italians have the best food in the world.  A bold statement, I know.  But I'm going to stick by it.

But here's the thing about Italian food: it is way different than we Americans think it is.  When The Mister and I first ventured to Italy, on our honeymoon, we were looking at menus night after night thinking "WHERE IS THE SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS?"  We kind of just thought that restaurants in Italy would serve food like the Olive Garden or Macaroni Grill, only with better ingredients and fresher pasta.

But oh, we were wrong.

Here's a sample of things I have never seen on a restaurant menu in Italy:

Chicken parmesan

Actually I've never seen chicken paired with pasta in any capacity whatsoever

Shrimp scampi

Fettucine alfredo

Stuffed shells

Baked penne

Calamari or deep fried ravioli of any kind (okay, who didn't see that one coming?)

In Italy, the pasta is the first course, and your second, main course is a meat dish.  So pasta isn't even the biggest focus of the meal.  I know, I'll give you a second to pick yourself up of the floor.  I felt lied to.

So after our first time to Italy, in which we ordered pickily and ate good food despite ourselves, we girded up our loins.  This time we went in knowing what we were expecting (basically: not the American/Italian fusion food that we were used to), and we ordered bravely, and didn't have a bad meal the whole time we were in the country.

Here is a list of some of the things we ate on our recent trip. Every single one of them we'd order again:

Pappardelle (a wide, flat pasta) with wild boar ragu

Quail wrapped in bacon on a bed of kale

Pasta with goose bacon

All manner of patês and livers

Jellied figs, onions and eggplants

Cured meats and cheeses

Wild boar salami

Toast with lard

Gosh, it was good.  The Italians may have inflicted Mussolini, the Mafia, a lot of questionable fashion, and prime ministers with a thing for teenagers on the world, but damn these guys can cook!

Oh, and now we both totally have a thing for wild boar meat.  I wonder if those javelinas in the Arizona desert would taste good on a cracker?

P.S. I apologize to all vegetarians who had to read this post.

P.P.S. I love Olive Garden and always will.

Siena, you have two new fans

Last stop on our trip was Siena, a little medieval town in the undulating Tuscan hills. We spent our time there sleeping in late, eating absolutely delicious Italian food at every meal (always accompanied by a bottle of the local Chianti), and strolling the streets hand in hand, utterly charmed by pretty Siena.

Sound cliché? I know.  But it really just was that great.  Hands down our favorite stop on the trip.

Naples, the city of trash and pizza and Mafia guys and more trash

Stop three on our recent little trek was Naples, Italy.  You might think that "Naples, Italy" has such a singsongy ring to it and sounds like a nice, romantic little town and you would be utterly, dead wrong.  Naples specializes in the following:

• Streets overflowing with trash (because the Mafia runs trash collection)
• Pickpockets
• Filthy buildings
• An astonishingly rude populace
• A particularly brutal organized crime ring known as the Camorra

It also has the distinction of having the worst metro system I have ever beheld - one that has no maps at all, multiple names for each station that are rotated according to whim, and old lumbering passenger trains doubling as metro lines. 

When we checked into our hostel in Naples, the receptionist was a young Canadian guy (He said "Let me tell you aboot the hostel" and I said "oh, where in Canada are you from?" and he said "Dang, I thought I was hiding it so well").  We asked him how he came to be there and he said that he had come for a few weeks, but oh you know, "Naples is a charming city" and so he stayed on to find work.  The Mister and I chuckled at this repartee, only to wipe the smirks of our faces when we realized he was entirely serious.  Charming?  The Mister confessed later that he was thinking "where have you BEEN lately?  Riyadh? Pyongyang? Baghdad? Darfur?"

Now at this point in the blog post you must be thinking that Naples sounds like it was a bust.  But here's the real genius: we did not go to Naples because we thought it would be charming or beautiful or polite. We went because they have the best pizza in the world.  And in this, my friends, we were not disappointed.  We were there for two and a half days and I am proud to say that we imbibed nothing except pizza for every.single.meal.  And I left wanting more.

Pizzeria da Michelle is known by the locals as having the best pie in Naples, and was made famous internationally when a little book called Eat, Pray, Love happened to mention that the pizza there was better than...well, you get the drift. We ate there on a dark cold night, next to a guy that looked rather startlingly like Frodo Baggins, and made plans to come back the next night before we even finished our first slice.  Cripes, that pizza was good.

We did do one respectable activity during our time in Naples, and that was to visit Pompeii.  The old Roman city was completely wiped out when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 and was buried in volcanic ash  well enough that it's surprisingly well preserved.  

Mount Vesuvius looming over the ruins of Pompeii

Our twinkly-eyed Italian guide was in his eighties at least and tottered around rather gingerly in some parts, but he gleefully pointed out every instance of phallic symbols carved into the rock (and called them "lucky").  Ancient Pompeii was a rather racy place, it seems.  His favorite is the one below, which is carved right into the road and it points in the direction of the brothel.  World's oldest highway sign? Billboard? Compass pointing to true north?



I loved this hitching ring for horses' reigns.  I kept thinking, I wonder who used this last? Where were they going? What did they look like? What did they eat for breakfast that morning? Were they wearing socks? And so on.

So we were glad to escape Naples with our safety and property intact, and I doubt it will make our list again.

But seriously, guys, that was some RIGHTEOUS pizza.

Rome, the eternal city

In front of St. Peter's Basilica

Rome.  On our honeymoon a few years ago, The Mister and I went to Florence and Venice, among other places, and we were always a little regretful that we hadn't left time for Rome.  So it became the next stop after Paris on our winter break. In Rome, we made the happy discovery that speaking to each other in heavy Italian accents does NOT get old.

We also made the discovery that the Sistine Chapel is overrated. *Gulp*  That's right, I said it.  Here's the deal: the actual painted ceiling is pretty cool. But you pay 20 dollars per person for the privilege of seeing it, and you cannot go straight in - you have to walk through about 30-40 minutes of a winding maze, packed with people, that they call the "Vatican art museum."  Whatever, we had just been to the Louvre.  I like art as much as the next person, but after 5 hours of medieval paintings in two days, I felt like if I saw one more "Pietá" or "Madonna and Child" that I would stick my museum brochure in my eyeball and swirl it around, just for a different view. But no matter, I still had to squeeze my way through this museum, and then finally, at the end, you are ushered into a small dark chapel that is packed cheek to butt with people looking straight upward. If you are the kind of person who sticks out your foot to trip people for fun, the Sistine Chapel should be your mecca.

But you know what was NOT overrated?  New Year's Eve fireworks next to the Roman Coliseum.  The Mister and I got a bottle of champagne and sat on what was probably a two-thousand-year-old stone wall next to the old ruins, made friends with some Argentinian guys next to us, and tried not to get killed by the rogue fireworks exploding helter skelter in the crowd.  Italians apparently aren't huge on the idea of an "official" fireworks display run by guys that actually have safety precautions.  People from the crowd just carried huge ones on their shoulders, put them down in the middle of a group of people, the more unsuspecting the better, and lit a match.  Unsurprisingly, ambulances were standing by.  It was ridiculously fun.

New Year's Day, we were in St. Peter's Square for the Pope's New Year's Mass and I achieved my first goal in 2011: get blessed by the Pope.  Check that off the ole' bucket list.  I know it looks in the video like there were hundreds of people there, but I am pretty sure when he did his up/down/across the body blessing ninja-move, he was looking right at me.

The inside of the Coliseum, where the Christians were fed to the lions and the gladiators fought to the death

More Coliseum - and the sun's finally poking through

Courtyard windows

View from a window built in 79 A.D. I bet the view's changed a bit.

Someone's old house